Miss Flicks

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery – Film Review

I wasn’t as enamoured with Knives Out as the majority back in 2019 but I kept an open mind for Glass Onion because of that incredible ensemble cast. However, I felt exactly the same again – I liked it but it did not wow me.

Daniel Craig returns as Southern detective Benoit Blanc to solve a murder once again. This time around, he is invited to the lavish home of tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton) on a private Greek island. Every year, Miles hosts a party for his “friends” – tone-deaf former model Birdie (Kate Hudson), scientist Lionel (Leslie Odom Jr), governor Claire (Kathryn Hahn), YouTuber Duke (Dave Bautista) and Miles’ former business partner Andi (Janelle Monae). When one of the guests winds up dead, Benoit has to figure out who has done it.

Glass Onion is highly entertaining and a lot of fun, probably more so than the first one. I laughed out loud often at the smart screenplay, the one-liners, the visual gags and the celebrity cameos (there are many). Writer/director Rian Johnson has once again created an interesting set of characters – mostly rich, entitled, spineless jerks – that all seem guilty of something. Most of them have done something bad, but who committed the murder? There are plenty of twists and turns to keep you guessing along the way.

While I loved the dialogue and characters as well as the costumes, set and production design, I thought the story was told in quite a clunky way. There is a lengthy, substantial flashback that interrupts the narrative midway through and really took me out of the film. It contains a lot of exposition plus huge, game-changing reveals so it was very important but perhaps too long and info-heavy.

The star of the show is Monae, who has a deliciously mysterious part that gets more and more interesting as the film progresses, but I also enjoyed Hudson as the former model destined to be cancelled over her thoughtless tweets. I loved Craig as Benoit and his new campy outfits but I thought he was overshadowed by the ensemble at times. I also want to shout out Jessica Henwick and Madelyn Cline as Peg and Whiskey, the +1s who deserved more screen time (even though the film is long already).

Glass Onion is another enjoyable whodunit from Johnson. I wanted to like it more but it never levelled up from good to outstanding for me.

In cinemas for one week from Wednesday 23rd November and on Netflix from 23rd December