Knives Out has attracted a lot of attention as a high profile film which is also in the vein of the traditional mystery. The cast is superb, led by Daniel Craig (sporting an unlikely American accent) and including such famous names as Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Frank Oz, and Christopher Plummer. Reviews and audiences have been very positive, and there is talk of a sequel being made.
Plummer plays Harlan Thrombey, a crime novelist who is cared for by a nurse, Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas) has made a fortune from his books (well, it is fiction..) and who invites members of his family, in classic fashion, to his great mansion to celebrate his 85th birthday. Needless to say, there is a lot of jockeying for position among the greedy and undeserving, and again in traditional manner the contents of Harlan's will play a central part in the story.
We know from the start that Thrombey is dead, but a good deal of mystery surrounds the precise circumstances. The police are willing to treat the case as one of suicide, but an unknown person hires the great private detective Benoit Blanc (Craig) to investigate. Craig has a lot of fun in this part. He's an actor I really like, although I did struggle to get accustomed to that accent.
The film is written and directed by Rian Johnson and his screenplay manages to keep you interested in the plot while making points about greed, power, and entitlement. I find it very interesting that, many years after Alfred Hitchcock highlighted the difficulties inherent in filming whodunits, a young film-maker has shown that it's possible to entertain twenty-first century filmgoers with a puzzle mystery.
