Knives Out

With the exception of my wife and daughter, and possibly my mother, Agatha Christie is the woman whom I love most on this planet. She truly was the most gifted and brilliant fiction writer who ever lived, and it rejoices me to see that her work still inspires other writers and filmmakers nowadays; more than forty years after she passed away. There are still many adaptations of her original work, but with "Knives Out", writer/director Rian Johnson attempts something entirely different. It's abundantly clear that Johnson was inspired by all of Christie's typical trademarks and hobby-horses, and he pays tribute to her most legendary characters and favorite settings, but the plot of "Knives Out" is entirely new and scripted directly for the screen. A good old-fashioned murder mystery/whodunit set in the enormous mansion of a wealthy family, full of eccentric people each of whom have dirty little secrets, convoluted plot twists, continuous red herrings that practically make it impossible to guess along, and a fabulous all-knowing but slightly odd sleuth slowly unravelling the clues.

Daniel Craig is downright terrific as Benoit Blanc, a private detective with a bizarre accent and weird one-liners, hired by someone anonymous to dig deeper into the strange and sudden death of patriarch Harlan Thrombey. It looks like suicide, but literally every greedy member of Harlan's bloodline had a motive for killing and - also in delightful Agatha Christie tradition - the plot even thickens after the reading of the will. It would be a shame to reveal too much about the plot, but rest assured that is refreshing and inventive, compelling as well as humorous, complex but simultaneously light-headed and 200% entertaining. The cast is phenomenal. Craig clearly enjoyed depicting a heroic protagonist that is the complete opposite of his James Bond character, and the Thrombey family exclusively exists of great talents, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Toni Colette, Christopher Plummer and Don Johnson. "Knives Out" is perhaps slightly too long, but never tedious, and very well-directed by Rian Johnson (who honestly doesn't deserve all this hatred from disappointed "Star Wars" geeks)

I enjoyed this a lot. Clever, interesting and plausible in its logic. I enjoyed the deception put forth by the characters. I can usually tell where something is going and was genuinely surprised by the hole in the hole of the donut.

Some people might hate the politics of it, but I thought it gave a good dig at both sides while still being fairly liberal. FOX watchers will hate it, which I can see as kind of fueling the negative reviews.

What can also fuel the negative reviews. is all the positive hype about it. Too much enthusiasm from the critics can hurt a movie sometimes. Viewers go into the theater expecting too much.

Things never live up to the hype and this one didn't live up to it for me. But I thought it was still pretty solid and entertaining. I'm not sorry I spent some money on this one.

Good story with a creative and effective delivery. Very well written screenplay with all loose ends tied up together and reasonable foreshadowing and morals that echoes throughout, but there weren't any striking moments even to the point of final reveal, possibly due to the addition of yet more details approaching the end in an attempt to create a (slightly) forced satisfying end. Unnecessary characters and scenes that serve little to no purpose in the story other than for comedic effect were present, which maybe one of the reasons why audience may have a sense of emptyness when leaving the theatre. Nonetheless, Knives Out remains a fresh form of storytelling that is trying to achieve and convey more than your ordinary murder mystery.

No, it wasn't perfect. No it was not Academy Award material. But it was a delightful story with lots of classic whodunnit elements. I thought we got to know each character well and, like in an Agatha Christie novel, fulfilled their roles. I thought Craig did a nice job and kept things moving along. Plummer was good in his limited screen time. Once again, I'm so fed up with people who decide that IMDB presents an opportunity to destroy a valid system by giving a movie such as this a rating of One. Do you really think this film ranks down there with Alligator Women on Venus. That's what the One ratings are for. It's usually because a film gets a little hype and those with no imagination or who are unhappy with their lives feel the need to throw everything off. Use lower ratings, but try to show some objectivity.

Generally speaking you tend to find more murder mystery TV shows than movies, this is partially since it's hard to build a complete mystery in the allotted movie running time. This movie builds this murder beautifully by showing the different points of views of the suspects. It has a different take than other movies since it gives the viewer a little too much details mid-movie which leaves you questioning everything to the last minute. The acting was brilliant and I didn't feel the number of characters was overdoing it at any stage.