Knives Out Review

Rating: 9/10 (13 December 2019)

If I were to briefly describe Knives Out, then it would be constantly engaging and entertaining. If you were not a big fan of The Last Jedi then I urge you to check this film out and see that Rian Johnson is a more capable director when he is working on his own. It's a film with issues that are minor and were the only issues I had with the film. The film does have some political subtext to it which I liked but there were some areas where it was a little on the nose. It didn't take me out of the movie but I wished it had been handled a little better. This movie has a bunch of A-list actors and they all bring their A-game. Every performance in this movie is pretty great but Daniel Craig, Chirs Evans, and Ana de Armas steal every scene they are in. It can be a little hard to get used to Craig's heavy southern drawl at first but you eventually get used to it. Chris Evans is a nice counterweight to everyone's craziness. I felt he was one of the funniest characters in the movie except for one joke. Ana de Armas is a great protagonist to follow throughout the film along with Daniel Craig. All 3 of them disappear into their roles and portray their characters almost perfectly. It's a great redemption film for Chris Evans from Red Sea Diving Resort. The script is pretty great. There are tons of clues hidden beneath each line of dialogue and it all feels very natural. This allows for Johnson's comedic writing to shine. He is able to cleverly insert jokes that most of the time are pretty hilarious. The reason the comedy didn't work that well in The Last Jedi for me was that it felt forced and didn't always align well with the tone but the comedy shines here because it fits the film's tone perfectly. While not every joke is hilarious, a majority of them are. The jokes that go along with certain characters fit their character pretty well. Some of the funniest lines in the movie are delivered by Michael Shannon and Daniel Craig because the jokes they tell perfectly fit their characters. The story is fairly simple but Rian Johnson throws a lot of simple twists throughout that makes it feels unique. The film decides to reveal what actually happened to the victim halfway through the film and it turns into a cover up which then progresses to a pretty major twist that I never saw coming but felt necessary and made sense to the narrative. The music was also pretty good. It added tension and was interesting to listen to while the events unfolded. Overall, Knives Out is a great murder mystery with great performances, a great script, hilarious jokes, and some interesting twists.