Knives Out Review (SPOILERS)

From the director of "Looper," "Brick" and my two favorite episodes of "Breaking Bad" (that being "Ozymandius" and "The Fly"), comes an old-fashioned murder mystery that's guaranteed to subvert all expectations. Yes, Rian Johnson is a great director and those who think he is trash just because he threw all their Star Wars predictions out the window with a certain Star Wars movie are really missing out. Although from my perspective, I think he should make more Star Wars movies because if this is the type of movie he can come up while distracting himself from all the toxic noise from the world's worst fan base (yes, I hate Star Wars fans), then I'm totally on board. Because, yes, I'm convinced that this is exactly what happened. I'm convinced that Star Wars fans were so angry and bitter towards him (they still trash him to this day on Twitter whenever he tweets - even with non Star Wars tweets), that he sat down and wrote a screenplay to distract himself. And that screenplay became "Knives Out," which is honestly one of the funnest, most insane movies of the year that ended up being completely different than what was advertised. I had no idea what was going to happen around each corner, which made the movie constantly engaging from beginning to end.

And thus ends my spoiler-free review of "Knives Out." Because, yeah, I have no idea how to even talk about this movie without discussing what it actually is. I saw it last Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving. And while there's many factors as to why it took so long to write my review, with the major one being that I was convinced that releasing a review the weekend of Thanksgiving wasn't going to get many views, one of said reasons was that I didn't know how to approach this. A movie who's premise is shrouded in mystery with the nature of it being a murder mystery is impossible to talk about because the more you say, the more you intentionally or unintentionally unravel the mystery for those who haven't yet seen it. Even if you simply say, "I totally did not see the ending coming," well, now the person is going to be expecting something that is unexpected, which completely changes their viewing experience. So what do you do? Thus I eventually concluded that I can afford to wait a bit to review this one. Give people time to see and experience it, then we can talk about it openly inside this post without having to worry about accidentally revealing the movie's secrets. Because if you click on a murder mystery review that says SPOILERS, that's your own fault.

Here's the thing. The movie advertised itself as something similar to "Clue." There's been a murder in the mansion and we have a whole laundry list of potential suspects. Daniel Craig is the investigator and he's going to figure out who killed poor Harlan Thrombey, played by Christopher Plummer. Actually he's not poor. He's quite rich. And everyone in his family has a legit motive as to why they would want him dead. Thus here we have characters played by Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Katherine Langford and more, all looking like they are having the time of their lives playing potential killers, with a whole host of potential side characters to watch out for in case the killer is someone who you might not be expecting. I will say that the movie went a little heavy on the interview style approach of telling the narrative, with lots of flashbacks as each character gets interviewed and tells their side of the story. But I was still locked in and was excited to try to figure this mystery out. But shortly after the introduction, the movie completely floored me by revealing who the killer was. Harlan Thrombey's killer was his nurse and caretaker Marta Cabrera, played by Ana de Armas, who accidentally killed him.

I was sitting there in the theater thinking, "Wait, what?" Because that wasn't supposed to happen. As it turns out, Marta accidentally injected Harlan with a lethal dose of morphine after mixing up the viles. Knowing he only had a limited time, Harlan came up with a plan to make Marta look innocent, which she decided to go with. Said plan included her escaping early, thus avoiding suspicion, then sneaking back into the house to tie up loose ends when Harlan slits his own throat, before then sneaking out again. Or something to that effect. Point being, Marta accidentally overdoes Harlan and the two come up with a plan to make her look innocent because they have a very strong relationship, which borderlines on inappropriate, but not in a romantic way. Harlan just doesn't want her to get blamed for his death even though it was her who accidentally killed him. Harlan was planning on leaving all that he has to her, but if she gets convicted of killing him, that might all go away. When it's revealed that Marta gets all of the inheritance, all of Harlan's kids have a strong vendetta out against her and a fascinating, tangled web starts to reveal itself, especially when Daniel Craig chooses Marta to help him solve everything.

This is certainly not the movie I was expecting, which is why I found myself really enjoying myself. This leads into a recently common theme. I guess I just gravitate towards the movies that do a good job of subverting expectations. This is the exact conversation that I had when I reviewed "Frozen 2" and got into my opinion as to why I like "Frozen" over "Tangled." "Tangled" is a fine movie, but when push comes to shove, it follows a very familiar pattern, whereas "Frozen" does something completely different, especially for a Disney princess movie. That's not to say you can't follow a familiar pattern and be enjoyable. If you have a strong execution, I can often forget about the fact that the movie is formulaic. In fact, "Tangled" is an example of a movie that follows a formula and is still enjoyable. But when you trick someone into thinking you're going to be familiar, then you take a sharp left turn or you manage to stand out because were unique, I tend to gravitate towards that. And there's no one better at doing this than Rian Johnson. Everything I've seen from him is an example of something bold and daring. He doesn't seem to be a director who cares to follow conventions, which is what we saw when he took Star Wars and completely flipped it on its head with "The Last Jedi."

Perhaps his style doesn't work quite as well when he takes over a 40+ year-old franchise that has millions of fans who expect a certain thing, but personally since I wasn't married to all of the Star Wars lore or all the books we now call legends, I was totally fine when he took Luke Skywalker and turned him into a completely different character than what everyone was expecting him to be. In fact, I thought that elevated the character and made everything a whole heck of a lot more interesting, but I suppose we'll dive more into that when we get into the next Star Wars movie that all of our impossible-to-please Star Wars fans are all going to hate. I guess the moral of the story is Rian Johnson speaks my language when it comes to film. I love his ability to take something and flip it on its head. But he's also not doing these things just for the sake of shock value. What he does has a purpose to it. His movies have excellent stories and strong themes that are often brutally honest and thus very poignant. And he shines best when he has full control over his property, which is why "Knives Out" works so well. This is 100 percent Rian Johnson's work of art. He came up with the story. He wrote the screenplay. He directed the movie. And he has the freedom to be himself.

In doing all of this, I became fascinated with what this movie became. Instead of being like Rian Johnson's version of "Clue," this movie became specifically focused on three characters: Daniel Craig, Ana de Armas and Chris Evans. Of those three characters, it was Ana de Armas that was front and center and she did a surprisingly great job of carrying the load. Not that I doubted her ability to do so. But there are so many big names in this that I was expecting this movie to be a group effort. In reality, this is Ana de Armas's film. Everyone around her is there to support her. They all do a good job in this and I'll highlight a couple of them here in a second, but she manages to be the one character who you become emotionally invested in. A lot of the side characters are very deliciously despicable, but Ana de Armas' charisma and charm gave the movie an emotional core to it as she was the one who gave off the vibe of genuine innocence, yet she was the one trapped in the deep center of everything, thus becoming the true victim of the film. I think having this emotional core to the film helped elevate it into something more than just a fun murder mystery where everyone on screen was a potential killer and Ana de Armas' performance helped her successfully stand out.

But of course everyone around her was a lot of fun. She may have been front and center, and thus shined in the spotlight, but the movie wouldn't be what it is without that large supporting cast building her up. The two biggest players around her were the two I mentioned previously. Daniel Craig and Chris Evans. First on Daniel Craig, he just looked like he was having the time of his life being this goofy investigator with a comedic, over-the-top accent. And when he recruited Ana de Armas to help him, they had a lot of good interplay, which is good given that they will be costarring in the upcoming Bond film. She tried to hide her big secret from him, but given that she throws up every time she lies, she wasn't doing a good job at it. And for a lot of the movie I couldn't tell if Daniel Craig was two steps ahead or if he honestly didn't see certain things coming until later and that was fun. But speaking of fun, Chris Evans becomes the movie's biggest pseudo-villain. He seemed like a jerk, but then he seemed like he actually had a good heart and wanted to help, which made his character even more mysterious and intriguing, but then it turns out he was a big jerk. After years of playing the perfect boy scout in Captain America, I think Chris Evans relished in being able to do the exact opposite.

There's a lot more that I could dive into here, especially since I left the door wide open by labeling this as a spoiler review, but in this instance I didn't necessarily label this as a spoiler review so that I could do an in-depth play-by-play of every sequence in the film. I just wanted to be able to freely talk about it instead of dancing around plot points or vaguely describing how I felt. After typing what I have in this review, I feel satisfied about what I have said, so I'm going to move forward to other things now. If there are points that I have left out that you do want to talk more about, feel free to come talk to me or message me personally. Just make sure you're respectful to others by not commenting publicly on this review in the comment section of Facebook or Twitter. But long story short here, "Knives Out" was simply a blast at the cinemas. Everyone involved feels like they are having a blast with this film while Rian Johnson feels like he rather enjoyed the idea of keep his audience guessing with so many unexpected twists and turns, while also impressively telling a story with a lot of heart and feeling to it. The best adjective to use for this film is that it is sharp. And I promise that the pun with the title there was not initially intended. My grade for "Knives Out" is a 9/10.