Glass onion: a knives out mystery

The best thing about Glass Onion, the new Netflix-funded Knives Out mystery, is how little it actually resembles Knives Out. The first film was an entertaining but overcooked whodunit, a snappy Agatha Christie throwback fortified with a modern satirical sting but undercut by its ham-fisted “eat the rich” social agenda… but it was also a massive hit, and writer/director Rian Johnson would have been more than justified erecting a lucrative franchise on its basic template.   

Instead, this initial follow-up (further sequels are in development) is less Agatha Christie, and more like a deranged, live-action game of Clue (one character even suggests that Benoit Blanc - the renowned Hercule-Poirot-by-way-of-Foghorn-Leghorn private detective played by Daniel Craig - must be a big fan, to which he snaps “I am not. It’s a terrible game!”). Johnson once again has class conflict on his mind, but this time his target is the “eccentric” billionaire tech innovator Miles Bron (Edward Norton) and the quartet of conflicted acolytes caught in his orbit - Connecticut politician Claire (Kathryn Hahn), head scientist Lionel (Leslie Odom Jr.), model turned fashion designer Birdie (Kate Hudson), and chauvinistic Twitch streamer Duke (Dave Bautista). Think Professor Plum backed by an influx of Silicon Valley capital and Mrs. Peacock as a social influencer.

Bron has invited his friends (which also includes Birdie’s long-suffering assistant Peg (Jessica Henwick, completely wasted) and Duke’s girlfriend Whiskey (Madelyn Cline)) for a weekend getaway to his private Greek island - a Neverland retreat that revolves around his state-of-the-art mansion / borderline Bond villain lair, dubbed “The Glass Onion.” Joining them - surprisingly - is Bron’s former business partner Andi (Janelle Monae), whom he ousted from the company under acrimonious circumstances, and Blanc, whose invitation turns out to be of unknown origin. Given that the gathering has a murder mystery theme, it’s assumed that Blanc’s presence has a firmly tongue-in-cheek motivation.

Of course, things don’t unfold according to plan. Even more so than in Knives Out, the payoff feels beside the point (the title, of course, is a reference to the Beatles song with its deliberately nonsensical lyrics, meant to stymie those who make a point of reading too much into things - onions, after all, are known for their many layers, but if one is made of glass and you can peer straight through it, then it doesn’t have much use… particularly in regards to a mystery). The actual fun lies in the plot’s intricate, puzzle box construction… but Johnson - either cynically or ingeniously - has also effectively safeguarded himself by making these films part homage and part spoof (it’s still not entirely clear if Blanc is a legitimately world-class sleuth, or - with his exaggerated Southern affectations - merely a lampoon of one). Whenever a knot is untangled by a narrative contrivance - as is the case with a mid-film revelation that hinges on one of the most hackneyed contrivances of them all - well, that’s all part of the joke, isn’t it? Wink, wink?

But, perhaps because of the specific nature of Glass Onion’s targets - particularly Norton’s Elon Musk-inspired blowhard, dancing the razor-thin line between genius and idiocy (or maybe just idiocy and idiocy) - it’s easier to revel in the film’s causticly satiric intentions than it was when Johnson was seemingly stacking the deck in favor of Ana de Armas’s immigrant nurse. The characters are thinly-drawn, but that’s rather the point - their entire personas are manufactured; a product of self-conscious superficiality in the social media age. As a sequel, the film feels less substantial than its predecessor, but its humor has a fleeter, more impish quality - when Bron, in a flourish of supreme hubris, reveals that he has the Mona Lisa on loan from the Louvre while the museum rides out the pandemic, the anticipation of potential disaster comes edged with giddy relish. If these characters were piñatas, let’s just say we wouldn’t mind taking a few vindictive whacks.​

Craig, free to stretch his limbs outside the grim parameters of playing James Bond, once again delivers a performance ripe with brio… but the film ultimately belongs to Janelle Monae. The actress/singer appeared poised for big-screen stardom after appearing in both Moonlight and Hidden Figures in 2016, but more recently has gotten swept up in ludicrous junk like Antebellum. But here - called upon to pivot in dexterous and unexpected ways - her talent feels like it’s been pulled back into focus. Blanc, fittingly, proves more than willing to cede the film - both literally and figuratively - to her character in the closing scenes. In that sense, he’s like the anti-007; all too happy to step aside and be upstaged by the latest of his platonic “Blanc Girls.”