You see, I expected complexity. I expected intelligence. I expected a puzzle, a game. But that’s not what any of this is. It hides not behind complexity, but behind mind-numbing, obvious clarity. Truth is, it doesn’t hide at all. I was staring right at it.
I was waiting for this movie with a fair amount of excitement. I really love Knives Out, the movie where writer-director Johnson first introduced us to Daniel Craig’s weirdo detective, Benoit Blanc. So when Netflix decided to release this briefly in theaters before it started to run on their streaming service, I was there.
And, while I didn’t find it as overall delightful as Knives Out, I did enjoy Glass Onion overall and that’s basically been the experience I’ve had with the rewatches I’ve given it since seeing it in the theater. I respect the fact that the movie has a different tone and is doing a different thing. The movie is overall sillier; many of the characters in Knives Out, not least Blanc himself, were played very broadly, but the cartoonishness seems dialed up quite a bit for Glass Onion. And it isn’t just that Blanc is in a different setting here; he himself seems different. There was something more serious about him in Knives Out, something by turns genuinely menacing and genuinely empathetic. There’s less of that here; he’s just goofier. This doesn’t necessarily mean Glass Onion is a worse movie than Knives Out, just that I enjoyed it a bit less and it’s a bit less rewatchable for me.
But when the movie is having fun, it is very fun indeed and very entertaining. It really does tickle me that Daniel Craig, who got a crack at James Bond and gave us one of the most serious, earnest and intense versions of that iconic character, has now gotten to create another iconic character of a very different kind. You can tell that Craig is having a blast and it’s great to see. Janelle Monae is poised and perfect in her ambiguous role. Edward Norton is also having fun as a kind of petulant, pretentious tech “genius;” he gets to have a meltdown near the end that is about the funniest thing in the movie. It’s probably his best live-action performance since Birdman and that was 2014. Kate Hudson, who I haven’t seen in quite a while, kind of steals every scene she’s in as the dimwitted Birdie. On the other side of the coin, I have to give a shout-out to Madelyn Cline who plays Whiskey, the eye-candy girlfriend of Dave Bautista’s Duke Cody; at first she seems to be just that, brainless eye-candy, but she reveals surprising depth – she’s a well-written and well-played character. And, while talking about the cast, I do just have to take a second to dwell on how wonderful it was to see Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury in their brief cameos; this movie really takes the cameo game to another level, but it was somehow so perfect to see them here, especially Lansbury, an actress who was herself an iconic detective, in her last screen appearance. It seems just seems so fitting.
Now, what to make of the fact that this movie is so much more predictable and simpler than Knives Out when it comes to the mystery? One of the things I love about Knives Out is just how incredibly complex that big reveal ultimately is; it’s a twist that I absolutely didn’t expect. I expected some elements of it, but I had no idea how it was going to actually play out. This movie really lampshades who the killer is pretty quickly; it does take a while to get to the main murder of the film, but the moment that death happens, you’re almost sure to know, as I did, who the killer is. I’ve seen just about every take imaginable on this. Maybe Johnson’s just too lazy. Or maybe he’s revealing a deep contempt for both the mystery genre and everyone who likes it. That one would be a bit weird for a guy who’s made three mystery movies and a ten-episode mystery television series, but, okay, whatever, I guess this is “new criticism.” Or maybe it is that Johnson’s getting at something thematic.
And I think that’s it for me. The script seems to be specifically deflating a particular kind of wealthy “genius,” arguing that there’s far less there than might at first meet the eye and it was incredibly fortuitious that this movie came out right around the time Elon Musk purchased Twitter and started a very public exploration of all of the ways he is, in fact, a very, very stupid man. I think there was a mythology that surrounded the very wealthy for quite a while, especially entrepreneurs or “inventors” or “innovators,” like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. And I think, over the last few years, that myth has just died a pretty cringe-inducing death right in the public view and this movie captures that zeitgeist perfectly. Blanc has a speech at one point that almost directly mirrors a speech given by the Steve Wozniak character in Danny Boyle’s film, Steve Jobs: “You can’t write code . . . you’re not an engineer . . . you’re not a designer . . . you can’t put a hammer to a nail. I built the circuit board. The graphical interface was stolen . . . Someone else designed the box. What do you do?” It’s all part of a general deflation of the wealthy class and Knives Out was, in many ways, about this same thing, from a somewhat different angle. I’m fine with Johnson satirizing wealthy idiots; maybe the script could be a hair stronger, but I’ll take it and be happy with it.
There are also just dazzling sequences here. Johnson’s just become a good filmmaker in a lot of technical ways. There’s a sequence at one point where the security shield around the Mona Lisa opens and closes over and over again and the way that scene builds tension is just masterful. And there’s a point where the film just pauses in order for us to go into a lengthy flashback that recontextualizes basically everything we’ve seen to that point. It’s a sequence that would sink the film if it didn’t work; it works perfectly. And, of course, the film just looks gorgeous in general, being shot in that gorgeous location in Greece. And a mention for Nathan Johnson who contributes an absolutely perfect score.
So, Glass Onion, at the end of the day, remains an incredibly entertaining, often very funny film that features some great performances and some actual thematic depth. If it falls a bit short of its predecessor, well, it’s just doing something different and I’m down for every movie in this series to be a little different, you know what I mean? Both Johnson & Craig have said that they’ll keep making these as long as the other one wants to keep making them and I hope they do; hopefully the quality will stay as high as it has so far. Because, look, if they keep making them, will I keep watching them? Now that’s no mystery. 4 stars.
tl;dr – not quite as great as Knives Out, but Glass Onion is still vastly entertaining, filled with delightful performances and continues the series streak of satirizing the wealthy in a satisfying way. 4 stars.