Rian Strikes A Political Nerve That's Already Dated

Rating: 3/10 (14 June 2020)

Rian Johnson must be seething that he didn't make the singular Spanish "Help" a Black one given that, a year after KNIVES OUT hit theaters, we'd have a pandemic (closing all theaters) followed by a political uprising of African Americans, making the whole "Undocumented Worker" issue... which owns 51% of the story-line here... as dated as the Sony Walkman, leg-warmers and bellbottoms...
And Johnson has successfully resurrected the All-Star Cast Whodunnit, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Toni Collette and Michael Shannon. But in the olden-times, they would be playing rich, white, crooked culprits who are also eclectic, darkly-humorous, interesting and intriguing enough to create an entire story around. But as noted in, ironically, another review featuring Michael Shannon (THE SHAPE OF WATER): Antagonists are no longer people who do bad things, but simply, bad people...
From one pivotal argument concerning illegal aliens breaking the laws of American-only America, the already obvious message of KNIVES OUT becomes far too clear, and the aforementioned cast merely serves to back up the most heated side of that debate, hardly having anything to do with the Mystery at hand or fleshing out their roles in it...
Only Daniel Craig, as a cocky Southern private-detective, and Ana de Armas, as dead millionaire Mystery writer Christopher Plummer's trusted nurse and household maid, have anything to do with how things not only pan out but... following Craig's overlong "finally explaining the murder" diatribe... ultimately turn out...
That's if you don't include the entire third-act finally providing Chris Evans his second-star status; he begins a sort of likeable anti-rich rich jerk who eventually provides the preachy agenda even more unbearably preachy wordplay...
And one of the most banal plot-points involves the maid's reaction to lying, making an extremely important character even more of an agenda with a pulse. And hardly even that. Ana de Armas is merely a pair of pretty pouty-lips here... Leaving the best character to be the least important...
LaKeith Stanfield plays a local detective who would have failed at solving the case had the quirky Daniel Craig not been hired, and his job here is to ground a possible crime that writer/director Rian Johnson seems to have created to reshape/end all Cinematic Mysteries... But unlike this down-to-earth lawman, KNIVES OUT needs some serious grounding.
"Why was I hired?" Craig's Benoit Blanc desperately asks Stanfield's Lieutenant Elliott. Probably the most logical question raised all along. And like so much else here, without either a logical or halfway satisfying answer/conclusion.