Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story (2022) Review

Title: Knives Out 2
Year: 2022
Director: Rian Johnson
Country: US

Language: English

I had tickets to Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story (hereby called Knives Out 2) at Toronto International Film Festival in 2022. Unfortunately I couldn't go, so I sold the tickets...for $100 each! The film was so anticipated that it had sold out in hours & tickets were selling second-hand for as high as $300. In a few weeks it will be out on Netflix, but I knew I had to see this picture on the big screen so I went to my local Cineplex,

Famed Southern detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) travels to Greece at the behest of an eccentric billionaire (Edward Norton). 

Knives Out (2019) was a breeze because the murder mystery at play was a tour de force in showmanship and storytelling. We're never meant to be amateur sleuths playing a guessing game, but rather on a whodunnit? rollercoaster. Knives Out 2 (2022) carries over this formula in a stranger setting (eccentric billionaire's island) with even weirder characters (Batista as a twitch superstar).

Throughout the picture Director Rian Johnson makes us chuckle with scattered bits of humor that seem random at first, but become more important during the second half. Much of the enjoyment come from the actors playing such quirky characters so straight & having such barbed dialogue being thrown at their ineptitude. "One should not confuse speaking without thought for speaking the truth."

Rian Johnson's approach to the murder mystery- setting expectations and then defying them, add to a riveting picture that, like an onion, has layers upon layers. There's an undeniable pleasure in watching the script unfold in ways that add more nuance to the story and characters within. Every "twist" is intelligently thought out, even if the characters are dumb as bricks.