Rian Johnson is like the drawling Southern detective he has now put at the center of two fabulously entertaining clockwork whodunits. The writer, director, and blockbuster puzzle enthusiast has a gift for attracting his audience to ornately patterned rugs, then yanking them away. It seems like Glass Onion is more straightforward and less elegant than Knives Out was. To fall into the same trap as the potential culprits who dare trifle with the great Benoit Blanc is to assume that you have gotten ahead of it.
Anyone annoyed by the culture-war trappings of Knives Out may be irked by how Glass Onion distinguishes itself at the beginning of COVID, with an opening series of introductions heavy on face Johnson can't make these reminders of the recent dismal past very funny.
Thankfully, he gets his new group of suspects out ofQuarantine and onto an island in Greece that is just as fancy as the movie itself. There is a glowing tower capped by a glass onion on the island. Craig may have hung up the tuxedo for good, but like Pierce Brosnan before him, he will continue to travel under the shadow of his famous role. Blanc couldn't be much further from Bond. It is a pleasure to see the star play quizzically befuddled, there are moments here where he almost hits the famous French figure of Monsieur Hulot, bumbling through the automated absurdities of a state-of-the-art retreat.
A real-life Bond villain owns the island. EdwardNorton has invited five of his friends to join him for a murder mystery game. A scandal-plagued model, a concerned chemist, a men's rights personality, and a savvy politician are some of the disruptors. Blanc is surprised that he is on the invite list. Someone else wanted the esteemed gumshoe present.
The movie's high-wire fun was due to the fact that Knives Out proceeded at a giddy scramble, complicating the rooting interests of its investigation and changing its rules every few minutes. Glass Onion is taking it's time a bit more. Johnson did not use the crosscutting interrogation sequence that opened the previous movie. It is hard to shake the feeling that Johnson is playing it straighter this time and that his latest characters lack some of the comic zing of the Thrombey clan.
Don't let the faith go to waste. Johnson's sleight of hand is dependent on the slow pacing. The way he solved the mystery hours ahead of schedule was the big early twist of Knives Out. He found a way to revive the spirit of that brilliant subversion, as the movie doubled back on itself to replay scenes from different perspectives. It's a kind of canny structural time travel, and it races Glass Onion into the grand fun of its back half when Johnson leans into his talent for upending expectations. More so than the previous Blanc investigation, this one seems designed to reward repeat viewings, and full hindsight will reveal new layers to even the clunkier scenes.
There is an ideological framework to this franchise of smoke and mirrors. There is a pointed skewering of tech-era robbery barons obsessed with "blowing up the world" in Johnson's class consciousness. That is good fun, dunking on the egos of billionaires. The film, a brainy comic thriller that expressed its class politics through Ana de Armas's touching portrayal of essential decency in the face of greed and sham philanthropy, was more affecting in how it foregrounded that element. Glass Onion ends up sacrificing a bit of that stealth poignancy at the altar of its larger, knottier, twistier sequel architecture. It is more of a piece of equipment.
The official trailer for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery was released today.
We could use contraptions in a clever way. The appeal of Knives Out is what Glass Onion preserves. Johnson has once more refined the formula of this classic genre, delivering all the expected thrills of a mystery unraveling while touching on contemporary social concerns and gleefully circumventing the assumed course of a narrative. He is a cerebral crowd pleaser. How do you surprise the audience while also giving them more of what they like? The answer is glass onion. Johnson would pull it off again.
Glass Onion will open in theaters at an undisclosed time before December 2nd, when it will be available on streaming service. You can find our coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival on our website.
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