Massively underwhelming

Rating: 4/10 (28 January 2020)

Being a middle aged Englishman I've been brought up on a diet of murder mystery stories and in many respects I've been spoilt. When the stories have translated from book to screen the production value is almost always secondary to the good conjunct story. I was very excited, having read the reviews, that seemingly in the case of 'Knives Out' I would be getting a rare trinity of a good story, good actors and good production. It certainly has two of the three. Unfortunately this film thinks it's cleverer than it is. It's simply a story of a privileged family and their pettiness with a rather trivial murder mystery chucked in as a contrivance to get them all together. Rian Johnson attempts to display the worst nature of the privileged minority with all the subtlety of a man screaming 'I am woke' at the top of his lungs at anybody who'll listen. Unfortunately subtlety and nuance are what makes for a good mystery story, you need to pay attention so as not to miss anything. With this film you could miss probably the middle third of the film and you'd not be any less aware of what's happening. A bit of a shame really.