Movie review: Benoit Blanc Knives Out and Glass Onion

In Knives Out, the first Benoit Blanc murder mystery, Harlan Thrombey, a well-known crime novelist is found dead after his 85^th birthday. His throat had been slashed. Could it have been suicide? Can people even slash their own throats??? Top detective Benoit Blanc is called in to solve the murder mystery. Harlan’s family, despite an outward appearance of unity, soon reveals their divisions, discord, greed, hatred, conniving and intrigue. They are a perfect bunch of suspects.

To say I was underwhelmed is an understatement. The plot had all the makings of a good, old-fashioned murder mystery that aficionados of famous detectives would love, sitting back on the sofa, chomping popcorn, and solving the crime with their favourite detective. Then it all fell apart. Let’s start with the plot. Long, convoluted, repetition of scenes, people driving here and there and back and forth, a shoal of red herrings, a vacuous and boring heroine, and inevitably ennui sets in when one thinks that the movie is two hours and ten minutes long. The murder turned out not to be a murder at all, but the reason given via an incomprehensible southern twang in an execrable performance by Daniel Craig was weak and did not hold up to scrutiny.

The cast… Well, can one go wrong in a movie when you have acting greats like Christopher Plummer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Colette, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, M. Emmet Walsh, Don Johnson, and Frank Oz? Yes, when you have the lead detective being played so appallingly by Daniel Craig, but more on that later. The murder mystery concept is perforce stagey, but it is expected of the genre and the actors certainly did their bit. But the badly worked out script and the glaring plot holes requiring the above-mentioned back and forth hampered the actors from appearing to advantage. Most watchable are Jamie Lee Curtis and Toni Colette who do OTT so well.

Moving on to Glass Onion, which I watched last night. Why, one might ask, would I bother since Craig’s performance was so hammy and abysmal? Because I thought he would drop his dreadful southern accent (whose very bad idea was that?) or at least make an effort to improve. Surely these production companies have top dialect coaches and if Reese Witherspoon (Legally Blonde) and Jodie Foster (Silence of the Lambs) can manage a southern accent, why not Craig? Who knows, but his accent slipped all over the place like soap in the shower and only added to the jarring issues that appeared.

This plot was more like the traditional Agatha Christie murder mystery. A sleazy tech billionaire, played by Ed Norton, invites a group of close friends to his getaway island for a murder mystery weekend. His death, to be exact. But interestingly, he is not the one murdered and before the group arrives on the island, one of them (who was actually murdered), miraculously appears on the pier to the shock and horror of several people. Somehow Benoit Blanc is invited. Again, can one go wrong with acting stalwarts like Kate Hudson, Kathryn Hahn, Dave Bautista, Leslie Odom Jr, and an absolutely brilliant, scene-stealing Jackie Hoffman (playing Bautista’s Ma). Lest I forget, the original Mona Lisa painting gets a star spot, and the inimitable Angela Lansbury has a cameo. This plot was a little short on details but one soon surmises that Miles Bron’s friends are actually hugely dependent on him for their careers and will say and do anything to stay in his good books. The pace soon kicks off when one of the group dies, fatally poisoned by a celebratory drink. Mayhem, carnage, and a fiery meltdown ensues. Most watchable is Kate Hudson as Birdie Jay.

Daniel Craig is so bad in this rendition of a detective that he makes Kenneth Branagh’s attempts to play Hercule Poirot seem comparable to Sir Laurence Olivier. The southern accent is worse than bad. I do not think it even exists in the canon of southern dialects. Half the time he is incomprehensible. Craig’s actual performance veered from slapstick clowning to over-the-top drama queen. I have faithfully watched all his James Bond movies, more out of loyalty to the brand than to the actor. Comedy is not his forte. It seems as if the director and the scriptwriter took bits from all the famous detectives that have gone before (Poirot, Holmes, Maigret, C. Auguste Dupin, Morse, Mason, Wexford, Dalgleish et al.) and cobbled together an awful Frankenstein monster. However, given the ratings and box office takings, people love this mishmash of a detective. Who am I to judge, except give my honest opinion.

I am playing devil’s advocate here, but I wonder when Daniel Craig and Hugh Grant will have to apologise to the woke Alphabet Soup mob for playing gay characters when neither of them is gay. I also found that angle annoying, irrelevant, and vaguely insulting to the gay community. Either this was an effort to be fully woke and ‘inclusive’ or this was an effort to lure the gay audience because the producers did not quite trust that gay viewers would watch it unless there was something in it for them. Anyone of any sexual orientation will tell you they watch a movie because they like an actor or a genre, not because they have to be persuaded. Even more bewildering is that Benoit Blanc being gay has no bearing whatsoever on the character and what he does. If the door-opening scene had been cut, one would not know, and it would make no difference to the story.

I am not sure if I will watch another Benoit Blanc mystery.