Knives Out (2019)
Everyone has a motive. No one has a clue.
Is there any way tonight’s movie can possibly live up to the hype? I mean, it’s not that everyone has been saying raving things about it or something like that - more just I’ve wanted to see it since I saw a trailer in the theaters, and that’s a pretty lengthy amount of time after numerous thwartings in the mail-roulette. The trailer tells me to expect some good fun like in Clue, and the cast tells me it should be pretty good acting - but will the mystery hold up? Will there be surprises and fun? I guess there’s only one way to tell - it’s time for Knives Out.
As should be expected, the plot here is a bit mystery who dunnit. Given that’s the fact of the core, I need to not really go to far into the plot - without the questions and twists and misdirects for you to be bamboozled by or see through for yourself, the mystery angle is lost and a good portion of the movie ends up feeling less impressive because of it. There are tropes to the genre, and the movie plays with them - but rest assured, it’s a pretty decent journey with plenty of lefts when you expect rights. The strange part is, the movie is rather straight forward about every event as it comes up - usually told in a flashback form when that part of the story is required from a character, brought about via police/detective questioning. A rich man dies, it’s ruled as suicide, and his family is sort of sad about it - whereas someone hires a detective to figure out if truthfully it was in fact suicide.
At first, I thought the movie had played it’s story cards to out - but it provides a bit more depth and thought than I would have thought. It’s smart about what it’s telling you and how it’s presenting it - and yes, not all elements are something you could really come up with before they are revealed to you, but as far as setting up motives for all the characters and giving ample room for you to guess any of the characters, it’s there. Because of such, it also brings with it a little commentary - intentional or not - about family, money, integrity, and karma. The title fits the movie in the sense that it could be anyone - although at the same time, it’s not quite as literal a title, considering the lack of actual knife usage in the movie as a whole. My original assumptions in my head were akin to the old Clue movie, however this one has a far lower body count than that movie. What isn’t really lacking from that comparison is the quirkiness and humor however.
See, Knives Out is mostly serious about itself - but it doesn’t really feel that way. The characters all feel a bit or a lot exaggerated - the detective hamming up the accent, the character who gets sick if she lies, the hyper-old granny who seems more like a creepy wrinkly statue staring into space most the time. The events as they unfold seem a bit crazy at times. By the end of your rollercoaster ride, you’ve had enough punchlines and setups that you couldn’t help but smirk at at least one thing if not laugh at another, even if the moments themselves don’t generally feel like it’s meant to be an actual comedy moment. Of course, there’s also the meant to be comedy moments - the movie, as a whole, is entertaining in a good way for sure, and that helps keep you watching even if the movie wasn’t good - which I’d say it is good, so that’s not really an issue here anyways.
You have a clue yet?
Acting is great. Be it moments of the one officer nerding out about various things, the family arguing about something, or a someone playing off a character trait. It’s got a couple of big names in here that people will recognize, so it’s not surprising that they would be doing a fine job - but even the one’s who I don’t recognize in the slightest do a good job of adding to the movie and playing up what’s needed to be. They also all do an incredible job of not giving away who did what until the reveal. Line deliveries are well done, and the way an actor carries themselves or emotes with their faces also helps to add a good deal to the movie, introducing us to how calmly most character can tell a lie or slightly fudge the truth to protect themselves - with the exception of course of the character who gets sick from lying. Despite coming off as the main (living) character of the movie, she does share the screen time pretty well with most the other characters as well - although for the most part, they all generally have their one moment to shine.
Costumes get to be both normal and elaborate at the same time here, on account of the rather eccentric tastes of some of the rich. That said - it’s a modern-type movie, so their isn’t anything super fancy and impressive going on in the costume department. It’s done well - it all speaks volumes about a character to just look at them and in turn feels quite fitting and as though at least some amount of thought was put into their outfits, but it won’t really visually arrest a person as a more out-there movie could. The house itself is quite a looker of a set, rightly invoking every feeling you could want from a murder-mystery book, movie, or otherwise. The violence is small in this one, although it looks fine enough when it does occur. Honestly, a lot of the effects department here doesn’t feel like it’s doing anything - but at the same time, it in turn means it’s doing it’s job for a movie like this, where it’s not standing out and taking over from the characters and mystery.
Audio balance is good. Background audio adds to the movie without overpowering things, and outside of parts where everyone is mob-talking you can understand everything someone says just fine. Line deliveries are good, carrying with it different levels of emotion as necessary, including different levels of “better than you.” The music is there and what you’d expect, although also doesn’t stick around with me much as is the norm. You could say that the detective’s accent is a little over the top, and I wouldn’t really argue with you there, but when it comes to it that’s really the only fault I can come up with for the audio side of things. In general, everything is just well put together and handled.
A pretty diverse cast really.
Although impressions going in was that I would be getting a more modern Clue, I don’t think that’s necessarily an accurate assumption and it might be doing a little disservice to the movie. Clue felt much more like a comedy first, where everything is just over the top campy wacky fun, whereas Knives Out feels more like a serious movie where the quirks of the characters bring about comedy. Both are entertaining and enjoyable, but both offer some different things in them. I might find something like Clue a bit more rewatchable than this, but this is still a finely put together, well acted movie that offers plenty of enjoyment when watched. I think most would enjoy it, and the movie uses it’s expectations well to set up various twists and turns along its runtime, setting up a mystery that might be harder to call than most of the movies of it’s type. Check it out on a rental at least would be my recommendation - everyone deserves a little fun with their murder-mysteries, even if the murder is supposedly suicide.