Knives Out: A Review
/****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!***
My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This is an unoriginal, predictable and painfully dull two hour and ten minute episode of Murder, She Wrote laced with pernicious racism.
Knives Out, written and directed by Rian Johnson, is a murder mystery about the death of murder mystery writer Harlan Thrombey, and the search for his killer among his scheming family. The film stars Anna de Armas as Marta, Harlan’s nurse, with supporting turns from Christopher Plummer, Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Michael Shannon and Chris Evans.
Sometimes the Gods of Cinema Smile Upon You…and Sometimes They Don’t
On Monday morning I had a block of free time and, as I often do when time permits, I headed to the movie theatre to partake in the cinematic sacriment. The film options on a Monday morning were pretty slim, and the only movies that worked for my schedule were Honey Boy and Knives Out. Honey Boy is Shia LaBeouf’s pseudo-auto-biography, and while I hold no animus toward Shia, I hold no love either. In addition, I just wasn’t in the right headspace to commit to a heavy movie about the tumultuous existence of the guy from Transformers. Knives Out is not a film I had any previous interest in seeing, but I did hear it was “fun”, and so in the search for some mindless entertainment I made the leap and went to see Knives Out.
My quest for mindless entertainment was only partially fulfilled, as with Knives Out I certainly got the mindless part but didn’t get any entertainment. I found Knives Out to be anything but fun. Now, to be fair, in general I am not a fan of the murder mystery genre, it just isn’t my thing. That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a murder mystery movie on a technical level though and appreciate it for its craftsmanship and skill though. The problem with Knives Out is not its genre, but rather the fact that it is poorly constructed, abysmally executed, politically trite, culturally patronizing, profoundly racist and exceedingly dull and predictable. The best thing about Knives Out, and this will become more and more evident as you read this review, is that it forced me to take my knives out against it.
One of the biggest issues with Knives Out is that it thinks it is incredibly clever but in reality is incessantly imbecilic. The film is an thinly-veiled allegory for the immigration debate in America, and is little more than a piece of virulent propaganda whose politics are obstinately Manichaean and frankly, repulsive and disgusting. Tackling the immigration issue is certainly a worthy undertaking, and I would love to see a well-made film navigate the nuances and intricacies of that topic in its text or sub-text, but the politics of Knives Out are so ignorant, arrogant and infantile as to be odiously repugnant.
The most damning part of the film’s politics is that the movie drips with a visceral hatred of white people. The film’s denigration and belittling of white people is aggressively heavy-handed. The Thrombey family are presented as a collection of conniving and deplorable whites marinated in privilege, which makes sense since they are the villains, but make no mistake, the film isn’t just about hating the rich, white Thrombey family, it is about hating and belittling ALL white people regardless of class. Evidence of this is that Fran, the Thrombey’s poor white housekeeper, and white police officer Trooper Wagner, the two most prominent non-rich white people in the film, are portrayed as a money-hungry schemer and a pop culture obsessed nincompoop, respectively. The white people in this movie are all morally, ethically and intellectually revolting.
Whites in Knives Out lie, scheme, and are compulsively duplicitous, whereas Marta, the Latina immigrant with a heart of gold, is portrayed as literally being physically incapable of lying or doing anything bad. In addition, Detective Eliot, who is black and is essentially Trooper Wagner’s partner, is calm, cool and rational next to Wagner’s empty-headed buffoonery.
***I AM BREAKING MY NO SPOILER PLEDGE IN THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH!! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!***
SPOILER ALERT: The coup de grace in terms of the film’s propaganda is that in the final shot the white Thrombey’s are all gather in the driveway, and standing high above them on a balcony is Marta, the new Queen of the Thrombey estate. The white people look up at her with resentment, and also with hope, that she will be gracious and benevolent towards them now that she is in power even though they did not treat her with respect and grace when they ruled the roost. The final shot of the film is Marta looking down on the white people and drinking from a coffee cup that reads “my house, my rules”. Message sent and received.
****END OF SPOILER****
I don’t mind a film having a political perspective, in fact I prefer it, but what I do mind is a film that has such a pedestrian political outlook infused with such a blatant animus towards one group, whatever group that may be. The politics of Knives Out are so insidious, insipid and pernicious I couldn’t help but think of Leni Riefenstahl, the Third Reich’s documentarian, when I watched it, not for the quality of the film making, Riefenstahl was a genius, but for the racial viciousness that fueled it. The animus towards whites on display in this movie would be absolutely unacceptable if it were aimed at any other group, be it Jews, blacks, Latinos, Asians, gays, lesbians or the transgendered. That this movie is gaining so much traction in the culture, is adored by critics and is considered “fun”, is a very ominous sign for the what lies ahead for us all.
As for the cast of Knives Out, they are an appealing bunch who are very unappealing in the film. Daniel Craig is an actor I genuinely like and is the best James Bond of my life time, but his Benoit Blanc private detective character is painful to behold. Never has a Southern drawl been so brutally mistreated or a caricature so stretched beyond credulity.
Anna de Armas is easy on the eyes, and you could find worse things to do than look at her for two hours, but beyond that she doesn’t bring a whole lot to Marta. She is not assisted by the script in any way, which flattens her character into a one dimensional saint. In a way Marta’s sainthood diminishes her and is, ironically, racist in that it dehumanizes her. Marta is not so much a full fledged, multi-dimensional person as a glowing orb of noble intentions…maybe she’d be more interesting if they let her be an actual human being.
Chris Evans took time out of his busy booger eating schedule to bring his extra special brand of vanilla to the movie. It is astonishing, considering that he is so white he’s nearly transparent, that Evans is a black hole of anti-charisma from which no magnetism can escape. Evans out of his Captain America costume is like Donald Trump naked…painfully unappealing and hysterically underwhelming.
Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Jamie Lee Curtis and Toni Colette all appear in the film and I assume got paid handsomely, and I am happy for them, they are quality actors who deserve respect and admiration. I hope they find more substantial projects with which to make their living in the future.
Rian Johnson is best known for directing the much maligned Star Wars : The Last Jedi in 2017, and Knives Out is an equally vapid, vacuous and politically correct enterprise. Johnson’s filmography is glaring proof of his allergy to nuance and character development. It would appear that Johnson is a Hollywood white knight who overcomes his lack of talent and skill by getting hired simply for being the most self-loathing white man at the pitch meeting. Johnson is among those self-loathing white people who pose at racial sensitivity because it costs them nothing, but who are actually racist because they promote themselves over whatever cause they pretend to care about.
I did not care about a single person in this movie, and thus didn’t care about the movie at all. There is no tension, no surprises, no twists, no turns, no drama and no insight or interest generated in this film. Knives Out is not a well made murder mystery, it is a two hour and ten minute long episode of Murder, She Wrote crossed with an MSNBC inspired woke telenovella. If you love murder mysteries maybe this movie will hold your attention, in which case I recommend you wait to see it for free on cable or Netflix. As for everyone else who is either minimally interested or actively disinterested in murder mysteries, my advice is to never waste your time on this piece of abhorrently dull nothingness.
With Knives Out the gods of cinema seemingly abandoned me in my Gethsemane…but then, in a twist much more interesting and substantial than anything that happens in Knives Out, the gods smiled upon me. You see, during my screening, for no apparent reason, the house lights came up about midway through the film. The movie never stopped, it just kept rolling with the lights on. Needless to say the view of the screen was obstructed and it was all very distracting. After a minute or so a patron near the exit left the theatre and informed staff of what was going on and after about five or ten minutes the lights went out.
I realized during this incident that this was my get out of cinema jail free card. By intervening and “ruining” my screening of Knives Out (which was already ruined by the movie being awful), the cinema gods had smiled upon me after all by giving me the excuse to get a refund for my ticket. And sure enough, once the credits rolled I made a beeline for the manager and calmly explained what had happened and he gave me a free pass to see another movie. I will never get the two hours and ten minutes of my life back that Knives Out took from me, but thanks to the cinema gods, I will now get to drink the art house nectar that is Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life for free! Thank you cinema gods!
©2019