KNIVES OUT: 4K Blu-ray (Lionsgate/MRC/T-Street, 2019) Lionsgate Home
The Agatha Christie locked door/puzzle room murder mystery
has been tried by many, and as many times before; the intrigue to be derived
from its chronic re-visitation of the elemental suspects, gathered together under
one roof, creating more ennui than originality in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out
(2019). While hailed as something of a minor revisionist masterpiece, Knives
Out really lacks that kernel of devastating revelation at the end to make
what preceded it truly worthwhile. Indeed, by mid-point, Johnson has already stripped
bare the ‘who’ and ‘why’, shifting his focus to a passably intriguing blackmail
of the prime suspect, who is – in fact – innocent of the crime. After 2005’s Brick,
Johnson, who also wrote Knives Out, came up with the basic plot for this
half-baked whodunit, aspiring over the next decade to see his vision brought to
the screen. The feasibility of such a project did not reveal itself until 2017,
with Johnson’s cache on Star Wars: The Last Jedi affording him the
opportunity to essentially write his own ticket and get the movie made. For
inspiration, Johnson turned to Dame Christie first, as well as his affinity for
the movies, Sleuth (1972), Deathtrap (1982), Clue (1985)
and Gosford Park (2001) – among others. Yet, in viewing Knives Out,
even without this prior knowledge at hand, the picture very much feels like a ‘hand
me down’ or piecemeal of devices and deceptions played out elsewhere to better
effect. The complexity of the murder itself – and, indeed, the clumsy cover-up
by the winsome ingenue - the usually glamorous, but herein made dowdy, Ana de Armas as
nurse, Marta Cabrera (prone to vomiting in lieu of being able to successfully
tell a lie) retains an air of the mechanical, or rather, merely ‘going through
the motions’ to take us from plot points ‘A’ to ‘B’ and so on.
There are no particular shockers in Knives Out;
the discovery of aged mystery writer extraordinaire, Harlan Thrombey’s (Christopher
Plummer) body inside the claustrophobic upstairs’ attic retreat of his gothic
manor, throat slashed from an apparent suicide, kick starts the plot with a
forgettable jolt, more upsetting to his housekeeper, Fran (Edi Patterson), than
any of his three ungrateful, middle-aged children; Walt (Michael Shannon), Joni
(Toni Collette, generally looking jaundice and unwell) or Linda (Jamie Lee
Curtis, reconstituted as a petrified stick of kindling). The real tragedy of Knives
Out is that is never allows any of the aforementioned to render a truly
fine performance – ditto for Don Johnson’s Richard Drysdale (Linda’s philandering
hubby), Chris Evans, as their egotist son, Hugh Ransom Drysdale, Lakeith
Stanfield – utterly wasted as Detective Lieutenant Elliot, and, Katherine
Langford as Meg - Harlan's granddaughter by Joni and Neil. This leaves the
heavy lifting to top-billed Daniel Craig, carrying off a terrific Southern drawl
as renown private detective, Benoit Blanc – the Hercule Poirot of this deadly
entanglement. Craig, looking like eight miles of bad road, is a minor
revelation and appears to be reveling in his Kentucky-fried caricature of this
super sleuth. Indeed, his remains the only animated character in Knives Out,
worthy of our time and general amusement. And Craig, a much finer actor than
most of his movie roles have allowed him to reveal, at least tries to get to
the nuts and bolts of what makes his easily invigorated character tick and
click. Not so much for the remaining cast, some of whom all but phone in their
performances, and thus, steadily emasculate this already
highly implausible story line with their tedious dumb show.
Principally shot with an air for flamboyance by
cinematographer, Steve Yedlin, in and around Boston, Massachusetts, with
virtually all exteriors of the Thrombey manor house, but only some of its
interiors photographed at Ames Mansion in Borderland State Park, Knives Out
certainly has the star-making pedigree of a solidly entertaining murder
mystery. Alas, the movie falls into the pitfall of becoming plot-driven rather
than character-driven. We never get to
fully appreciate any of these well-heeled social misfits for the true depth of
their social depravity. And this shortcoming is further exacerbated by the
rather cartoonish display of affected mannerisms tossed off as character traits
by actors, Toni Collette, Don Johnson and Jamie Lee Curtis. In his first act,
director, Johnson attempts to dispense with the murder in the first 30 sec.,
but then spends an interminable amount of run time, toggling between the
immediate past and present, with each of the principles revealing a little
something more about Harlan’s 85th birthday bash which dovetailed
into his untimely demise, presumably staged later that same evening. This exposition
is purely for the audience’s benefit, but relayed in such a matter-of-fact way,
instead of sneakily and steadily to be parceled off throughout the tale, one
simply wonders why Johnson did not forgo the tedium in its entirety and just
insert a title card at the outset stating something to the effect, ‘a murder
has been committed and these are our suspects…now, on with the show,’ because,
in effect, that is precisely what he has done ‘visually’ in his introduction to
these people.
The use of ‘titles’ to introduce Walt, Joni, Linda and
Richard is a bit too ‘on the nose’ for good taste, even as each of these red
herrings idiotically tries to conceal the viable reason for having murdered
their own father; all of which turn out to be nothing more diverting than
weak-premised MacGuffins. Walt was being relieved of his responsibilities as
manager of Harlan’s publishing empire; Joni, discovered by Harlen, double-dipping
into her daughter’s college fund and siphoning off roughly $100,000 dollars a
year into her own failed business venture, while Richard is having an extra-marital
affair Harlan was threatening to expose to Linda via a letter. It all makes for
a lot of needless misdirection, the bulk of which filters down into Act Two before
Johnson suddenly becomes quite bored with the whole affair and shifts his focus
to the reading of Harlan’s will, making Marta his sole heir, and thus, by
extension, the scapegoat for his murder. She finds an unlikely confident in Ransom
who, after storming out in a huff during Harlan’s birthday bash, and remaining
conspicuously absent from the subsequent funeral we never get to see, has newly
arrived for the reading of his late grandfather’s Will.
Accosted by the family as a gold-digging ‘anchor baby’
(Marta’s mother – played, in a thankless part, by Marlene Forte – has entered
the U.S. illegally), Marta and Ransom escape by car; Ransom, at first, invested
in getting Marta to reveal to him she has accidentally injected Harlen with a
lethal dose of morphine and then, with Harlen’s complicity, covered up the
crime by slitting his own throat. As blackmail is now the order of the day and
the modus operandi for what quickly unravels and escalates into a race against
time, either to exonerate Marta or compel the real killer to come forth with a
confession, Knives Out suddenly jettisons all but its skeletal cast to
tie up these loose ends. So, Marta discovers Fran, dying of another morphine
overdose in an abandoned laundromat – a copy-cat crime that could easily infer
she has killed twice to conceal the initial evidence. A trip to the medical
examiner’s office to obtain Harlan’s toxicology report – a copy of which has been left in an envelope
for Marta with a cryptic note, suggesting someone already knows of her medicinal
mishap – leads to Blanc and the building, already engulfed in flames to
obliterate whatever chances Marta had of proving her innocence and/or the cause
of death. And Blanc, now in full flourish of his crime-solving faculties,
endeavors to make the root cause of Harlan’s suicide known to the rest of the
family. And so, Knives Out enters its rather mind-numbing final act – a lengthy
summation, afforded exceptional aplomb by Daniel Craig, who is obviously having
a whale of a time doing something other than Bond…James Bond.
However, removed from all these pseudo-clever
manipulations of the crime, the plot to Knives Out can be summarized
rather succinctly and without all the theatrical fuss afforded the exercise. Harlan
Thrombey was not injected with a lethal dose of morphine by Marta. The labels on
the bottles were deliberately switched by Ransom. Problem: how could Ransom
have known Marta would dutifully perform her nightly ritual on auto pilot by
not reading the labels first? She might have actually killed Harlan. Instead, Marta’s
panic at not being able to find the antidote to counteract the effects of the morphine
leads Harlan into a rather rash, though strangely calm decision to take his own
life. And thus, he slits his own throat, presumably to avoid the devastating
final moments from the overdose. The next morning, Harlan’s body is discovered
by Fran. From here, the timeline of events is deliberately muddied by director,
Johnson to obfuscate what is essentially the police’s straight-forward
investigation and Harlan’s burial (which we never see). Instead, we are taken into
a thoroughly needless post mortem re-investigation of the crime; Detective
Lieutenant Elliot, frankly bored, goes through the motions yet again; this
time, for Benoit Blanc’s benefit. Blanc, it seems, has been hired anonymously to
reassess the particulars of Harlan’s death. And thus, the game of cat and mouse
begins; Blanc, purposely offending all three of Harlan’s children with
alternate theories of ‘the crime’ and forcing each to methodically perjure
themselves in their false relationship with the deceased. Or, in other words,
to reveal something even more insidious about themselves which might have
motivated any of them to commit murder.
Alas, none of these bits of business actually matter to
the plot, the rest of Knives Out is basically a snore. The incidental
characters fall by the waste side as director, Johnson shifts his focus to the
unlikely friendship between Marta and Ransom and their amateur sleuthing that,
again, and furthermore, leads to more confusion than clarity. Accused of
forcing Harlan’s hand to gain control of his formidable estate after the
reading of the Will, Marta retreats into a search for the truth while distractedly
trying to cover up what she has mis-perceived as her own complicity in the crime.
Blanc is, predictably, much too clever to be fooled, and pursues his
investigation from the anonymous blackmail note, only a partial photocopy of
Harlan's toxicology report. Discovering the medical examiner’s building destroyed
by arson, Marta receives a cryptic email with a time and address to meet her
blackmailer. After a brief car chase, the police arrest Ransom; Blanc,
revealing to Marta that Harlan's mother saw Ransom climbing down the trellis
from Harlan's room on the night of his death. Knowing the old lady to be frequently
confused, Marta asks to be allowed to keep her rendezvous with the blackmailer
without actually revealing to Blanc this is who she intends to meet. He agrees.
Only Marta now finds Fran, dying at the location, having been injected with morphine.
Instead of fleeing the scene, she makes a desperate attempt to save Fran’s
life. Sometime later, Marta is alerted by the hospital that Fran has died.
However, she lies to Ransom, suggesting Fran is still alive and recovering in
hospital and about to inform on the person who tried to kill her. Faced with
the notion Fran will reveal all, Ransom attempts to backpaddle his involvement
in both crimes. Unable to conceal her lie without first hurling the contents of
her stomach onto Ransom, Marta now reveals the truth.
Ransom learned at the party Harlan was leaving
everything to Marta. So, he swapped Marta’s medication vials and stole the
antidote so she would kill Harlan with an overdose of morphine, making her
ineligible to claim the inheritance. However, Marta actually administered the
correct medicine without first reading the labels, therefore innocent of Harlan’s
death. After this was reported as suicide, Ransom secretly hired Blanc to
unearth Marta's culpability. Having witnessed Ransom steal Marta's medical case
to hide the evidence, Fran tried to blackmail Ransom and paid for it with her
life. Ransom, thereafter emailed Marta with Fran’s location to frame her for
Fran's murder. Enraged by this foil to his seemingly ‘perfect crime’, Ransom lunges
at Marta with a knife plucked from Harlen’s elaborate display of weaponry. Mercifully,
the knife turns out to be a stage prop and is harmless. As Ransom is carted off
to jail, the family gather outside and quietly observe as Marta looks down on
them from one of the upstairs balconies of the manor house. Has her heart
softened towards them now, or has it been turned to stone by their various
betrayals that nearly sent her to prison for life?
Knives Out does not spin its web of lies so much as it keeps circling
the drain in this den of iniquity, earnestly endeavoring to throw every
conceivable roadblock into the crime, and thus, preventing any amateur sleuths
in the audience from figuring out the root cause for themselves. Misdirection
is an integral part of any whodunit. Indeed, Dame Christie’s literary murder mysteries
were celebrated for such narrative twists.
But director, Rian Johnson commits the cardinal sin of giving his
viewership the really big build up in usual suspects, before jettisoning all
but the obvious choices, narrowing the whole scenario down to just two suspects:
Marta and Ransom. As Johnson’s screenplay has already delineated Marta, by
virtue of her…well, ‘virtue’ – cannot tell a lie without becoming physically
ill, we instinctively know she cannot outfox Blanc. So, what she tells him is
ostensibly, the truth – or rather, a variant of it, with enough of the kernel
intact to spare her intestinal fortitude from serving as its arbitrator in her
stead. As all of the other suspects are
virtually banished from this scenario by Johnson’s process of elimination, he
has effectively pointed the finger at Ransom already and long before Blanc and
Marta catch up to this realization. Thus, Knives Out has concluded its
investigation for the audience – rendering its last act, a perfunctory
summation at best.
Knives Out arrives on 4K Blu-ray from Lionsgate. The UHD image,
derived from a 2K digital intermediate, is immaculate – for the most part. There
are errant hints of edge enhancement in some of the minute background detail.
Shot digitally, the picture is predictably nuanced; fine details revealed even during
the most dimly lit moments. Steve Yedlin's algorithms to replicate the visual
characteristics of 35mm film grain digitally is most commendable. A few of the
establishing shots have a less than organic texture, but on the whole, colors
are bold, rich and eye-popping in Dolby Vision HDR. The image favors warm tones
and leans towards yellow/brown and some elemental primaries, with deeply
enveloping black levels. The Dolby Atmos mix, for this mostly dialogue-driven
excursion, reveals subtle nuances in the actor’s performances, with front channels
favored, except during Blanc’s pursuit of Ransom and Marta by car. We really
need to give Lionsgate a nod for jam-packing this disc with a ton of extras.
These include an ‘In-Theater’ commentary with Rian Johnson, and, an audio commentary
with Johnson, Yedlin, and actor, Noah Segan, who played disposable comic relief:
the star-struck, Trooper Wagner, chronically fawning over Harlan’s prowess as a
writer. 5 min. of deleted scenes and a myriad of featurettes totally nearly 2 hrs.,
documenting every aspect of the production are also included in UHD. There is
also a Director/Cast Q&A (totaling 42 min.) and a brief (less than 2 min.)
homage to the great murder mysteries of the past, plus viral ads, a teaser,
theatrical and final trailer for the film.
Bottom line: Knives Out is a fairly pedestrian yarn, afforded a
great cast and some stunningly handsome visuals. Too bad the plot is pulpy at
best, leaving Daniel Craig’s performance the only real standout. This 4K UHD
Blu-ray is gorgeous with minor caveats and will surely please. Judge and buy
accordingly.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
3
VIDEO/AUDIO
4.5
EXTRAS
5+
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