Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Composite Score: 81.9
Starring: Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, and Madelyn Cline
Director: Rian Johnson
Writer: Rian Johnson
Genres: Comedy, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for strong language, some violence, sexual material, and drug content
Box Office: $13.28 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
Glass Onion: A Kives Out Mystery is the sequel to Rian Johnson’s critically acclaimed film Knives Out from 2019. This film finds Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc once again embroiled in a murder mystery among society’s elites, this time at a private getaway for an eccentric tech CEO and his closest friends, played by a slew of Hollywood names. The film carries on the themes of its predecessor, implementing now-familiar themes of wealth inequality and the fragility of wealthy capitalists. Glass Onion, particularly, takes some thinly veiled shots at tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos with its cutting wit this time around. It received an Oscar nomination for its screenplay, which fans of the film praised for its originality and wealth of comedy – beyond that of the first film.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
Glass Onion struggles on two paradoxical fronts. Firstly, the film explains too much of its own plot twists. The plentiful twists and turns of the first Knives Out are again present – in different form – in Glass Onion, but for whatever reason, Johnson decides to basically lay out exactly what is going on in every bit of potential twist that this film has to offer, leaving very little of the film’s narrative and mystery up to the audience to solve or interpret. Where the first Knives Out succeeded with red herrings and minimal explanation before the third act reveal, Glass Onion spends half of its second act explaining the backstory that led to the first plot twist and almost all of its third act explaining the reveal and the crime. For audiences here just for the comedy and to watch famous people explain things to each other, this plot structure might work, but for me, it just didn’t.
Secondly, Glass Onion hides too much of its own social criticism for its own good behind knowing chuckles and little “gotcha” moments. If I want to make fun of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos without them really knowing about it, I’ll make a burner account on Twitter and just tweet at them exactly what I’m thinking. A film like Glass Onion does nothing to actually speak to the problems it’s addressing. It simply point out that the problems are there, which we’ve all been acutely aware of for some time now. Seriously, The Big Short, Succession, Knives Out, and even this year’s Triangle of Sadness all address the same social inequalities and themes with about the same level of humor and actual solutions offered, and most of them have more interesting stories as well.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
If you’re coming to Glass Onion for a classic good time, it does deliver on that promise, providing enough entertainment value to keep you invested in what is going on on-screen. Though the mystery gets explained fairly quickly and simply, Craig’s portrayal of Benoit Blanc along with the performances of Janelle Monáe, Kate Hudson, Edward Norton, and Dave Bautista do a lot to keep you engaged. I like Craig as a gay southern detective, and he is given a lot of scenery to chew in Glass Onion, featuring as the film’s primary protagonist for most of its runtime. The other big names enhance the film with a combination of charisma, comedy, and intense commitment to their individual bits that gets you to buy in to the film even if its themes are a bit shallow and its story a bit basic. It hits the familiar beats that you want a mystery to hit, and it does so in a fashion that feels like a classic whodunnit of years past, bringing a sense of nostalgia to the table in the process.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery thrives on its sheer entertainment value, allowing the audience to watch Daniel Craig again don his ridiculous southern persona in the midst of a fun cast of characters delivering sold-out performances in this solid comedy-mystery. Its overexplanation of the plot and weak attempt at veiled criticism keep it from rising above its predecessor in my book, but there’s no denying that the film is a great time in just under two and a half hours. It is currently streaming on Netflix if you’d like to give it a watch some time soon.
