Reviewing the Director

Rating: 4/10 (28 November 2019)

Rian Johnson is a pretty hot property right now, what with the Star Wars credits, a decent science fiction movie, and so on. For a number of critics, the analysis of the movie ends there.
Because this is flat out not a very good movie. The twists are not prdictable - far from it - so incredibly complex as to be completely unbelievable. At the center of the plot is an absolute absurdity. The patriarch of the family apparently committed suicide by cutting his own throat - an incredibly painful way to die - because he thought he had been accidentally overdosed with morphine. Absolutely absurd. Only he hasn't been overdosed because of an incredibly contrived series of events . . .
. . . all of which have nothing to do with the various motivations of his heirs to do him in, established in some detail - the most entertaining part of the movie. As the movie goes on and drifts into the detail necessary to make all of the preposterous contrivances work, all this interesting background is completely lost, or ignored.
Along the way a police lab is completely destroyed by the simple expedient of throwing an arson device through a window, because you know how insecure those places are. Etc., etc., etc.
A splendid cast wasted. This is just not a very good movie.