When a family doesn't get what they want... the knives are unsheathed

Rating: 9/10 (28 November 2019)

Writer/director Rian Johnson has taken a classic whodunnit mystery and revamped the genre into a romp full of comedy and charisma, but remains loyal to the puzzle-solving demands of the genre. We can imagine Agatha Christie giving a thumbs up from her grave.
When the patriarch of the Thrombey family, mystery writer Harlan Thrombey, is found dead from apparent suicide, the family comes together in hopes of inheriting the writer's riches, while, at the same time, an investigation into the suicide is being performed.
From the very start we see the brilliance of the film as the camera speeds through different areas of the Thrombey mansion, highlighting Harlan's written works and collected antiques. We get to know the writer with these subtle depictions, and we infer that we are about to meet a snobby family. Although 'snobby' is an underlying subtext, the family we meet is full of eccentricity and quirkiness. Each member of the family provides something new for the palette. It's like sitting at the dinner table and enjoying a twelve course meal. And there's plenty of dessert with Daniel Craig playing the lead private investigator with the flamboyant southern accent, the mismatched pair of detectives, and the home nurse Marta, played by Ana de Armas.
One area where the film detours from conventional storytelling is in showing us how the death happened at an early stage. We are then invited to figure out what is the relevance of everything else happening in the story. What emerges from this is a very satisfying unfolding of events that does not leave us feeling cheated. But beneath everything, we see issues that afflict most families and their particular members. There are the haughty ones that boast in the glory of seemingly raising a family to a higher social status. There are those that remain in a family simply to leech benefits. Then there are those that are not satisfied with what they've been given, and feel they are deserving of more. These issues produce a field of combatants that disrespect the blood that binds them, and the Thrombey family is a clear example of that: when they don't get what they want...the knives come out.
In my opinion this is one of the year's better films with a stellar cast and a solid script. The younger audience will probably be bored (as were the rambunctious teenagers sitting in the same aisle as us), but for us older folks we'll be entertained and probably reminded of certain individuals that make up our family!
Overall grade: A