America's downfall wrapped in a Whodunit mystery

Rating: 10/10 (29 November 2019)

This would be a nice whodunit, Agatha Christie-like mystery film with Daniel Craig as a modern-day and Southern interpretation of Hercule Poirot with a few good jokes and good twists and turns.
But that would have gotten it a 7 or 8 rating from me.
What makes this movie one of the best of the year is the underlying message.
The movie begins with self-agrandizing introductions of the family members. The rich family who like to think that they have "built everything from the ground up" are really a bunch of failed or delusional characters that live off the fame and fortune of the family partriarch.
Jaime Lee Curtis is the closest thing to self-made you get in the Thrombrey family, but later we learn she got a million dollar loan from her father (sound familiar?) to get her started. Then there are Joni and her lifestyle brand and Meg with her liberal arts studies, the first broke and the second studying something useless in real life. Both living off Harlan. Alex at least is honest about his life and entitlement and his dependency on his grandfather. However, it is ultimately revealed that he would do anything to not have to earn his own Lifelihood.
The contrast to Marta, the Hispanic nurse could not be bigger, she is a kind, loyal, hard-working and compassionate person and the only real friend Harlan has at his birthday party.It is through her honesty (she even has to throw up when she lies) that Marta ultimately prevails over the dishonest family. In the course of the mystery she almost always acts morally sound and shows genuine emotion faced with all the crazy turns of the story.
The family pretend to have let her into their lives and several times call her "family" but none of the know which Latin American country she is actually from calling her everything from Brazilian to Uruguayan and revealing how empty their words are. Their actions after the will is revealed show even more starkly that they never saw her as part of the family. Even Meg and especially Joni, who seem to be less racist (at least in a discussion about the Trump administration) turn their backs on her as soon as their own inheritance is involved and their earlier professions of empathy with Marta are revealed to be superficial. Meg even uses the information she has on Martas mother to pressure her.
Ultimately, when Captain America is arrested for the murders Marta was supposed to be accused of, when all the self-aggrandizing colapses into itself and the pure-hearted and now rich Marta looks down from the balcony on the brats that wanted to "protect their ancestral right" to the house and fortune, you really see the similarities to an ever.more isolationist America that looks to the past for greatness and violates its own values to protect the wealth the current generations didn't even accumulate. It is the best depiction of the current state of affaires I have seen that is also funny and entertaining. And that gets my 10 stars!