Knives Out (2019)
By The Gorilla
This review contains spoilers
Last night I took Mama and Papa gorilla to watch Knives Out (2019) by Ryan Johnson, because I knew they were going to like it: it’s not too violent and features a nice cast, great atmosphere, and grandly structured mystery. And occasionally, it’s also funny. Mama and I are huge fans of Agatha Christie, and Papa just likes Mama enough to follow her to the movies.
Like so many other films nowadays, Knives Out rides the wave of nostalgia, but, given the genre, this time it was actually necessary and it worked. Without the melancholic longing for quirky characters, big mansions, and murders most foul from the ’30s and ’50s, it would be impossible to take this movie with that modicum of seriousness necessary to enjoy it. Though, thankfully, Johnson still set the story in our days and didn’t go for that hackneyed Stranger Things ’80s period that everyone else is using when going vintage.
Someone was sitting in my seat, so I roared and threw him a few rows behind us. We sat down and the movie started.
Most murder mysteries with such an ensemble cast tend to have underdeveloped characters, as there isn’t any time to really explore their psyches. Unfortunately, well-rounded characters have never been Johnson’s forte: he prefers to just write every persona as an amalgamation of contradictions (which so often is mistaken for complexity). This becomes the movie’s biggest flaw when it’s impossible to give a rotten banana about the main character, Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas), because her interior dilemmas feel phony and confusing. Meanwhile, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), the detective—who judging by the ever-changing accent, must come from some regions of North London, Texas—is mostly sidelined.
However, a whodunit is driven by plot, which Johnson gets almost to a T. So much that I could feel him at times breathing on the back of my head as he was writing the next twist and thinking to himself: “I got them with this!” The story is familiar, as a whodunit should be, but the novelty comes in the plotting, as conventions of the genre are turned upside down: the main suspect is the protagonist, the detective isn’t that important, and the main mystery gets solved in the first half an hour. In the second part, the movie steers more into the realm of action comedy, till the final resolution—which would have made Poirot proud.
The Cinematography, with its quick pans shot on wide lenses to give that nice distortion, worked perfectly for the movie, as did the score. And that’s it: nobody can really say that the movie isn’t technically proficient. Most people will enjoy it (rightfully so) and it does provide great fun for the whole family. Mama and Papa gorilla loved it, while it left me a nice sensation inside well after the credits were done rolling. Ultimately, Knives Out is cinematically articulate but emotionally empty.
As I was striding out, the man I had thrown across the room came to confront me. Because he had been nice enough to wait till the end of the movie to come at me, I just stood in front of him proud and silent till he left me alone. Afterwards I beat my pectoral muscles with a roar to remind everyone that I’m still the King of the Jungle, and that I was just being nice—not scared. On my way back, I bought a bunch of bananas, the alcoholic ones, went back home, and had a very gorilla sleep.
The Gorilla watches movies, The Gorilla thinks, The Gorilla does reviews. He is very opinionated, which sometimes drives his girlfriend, The Panda, crazy. He also likes alcoholic bananas, back scratches, and long naps in the sun.
