Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)

Preceded by: Knives Out (2019)

	Directed by: Rian Johnson	COUNTRY USA GENRE Mystery/Comedy NORWEGIAN TITLE Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery RUNNING TIME 139 minutes
	Produced by: Ram Bergman Rian Johnson
	Written by: Rian Johnson

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Benoit Blanc	Daniel Craig	½
Miles Bron	Edward Norton
Helen and Andi Brand	Janelle Monáe	½
Claire Debella	Kathryn Hahn
Lionel Toussaint	Leslie Odom Jr.
Birdie Jay	Kate Hudson	½
Duke Cody	Dave Bautista	½
Cameos	Ethan Hawke Hugh Grant Joseph Gordon-Levitt	-

Review

This would-be fashionable mystery film wants to look and feel like a million dollars, but has ended up as a catchpenny, gaudy follow-up to its successful predecessor Knives Out from 2019. Only detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is retained from the original, everything else is new yarn spun around more or less the same concept – private investigator Blanc is brought in to solve a mysterious situation. Rian Johnson (Looper) has both written and directed yet again, and he tries desperately to be clever in every single scene. But the film is so wordy, contrived and weirdly diversified that it suppresses any chance the story ever had of feeling fresh and elegant. The characters feel simultaneously indistinguishable and insipidly diverse. They have become a parody of well-rounded movie characters rather than the instruments for social satire they arguably were intended as. Granted, Glass Onion has a mildly fascinating intro, but then moves fast into an hour of explaining rather than presenting its story, which is the true hallmark of lazy movie making.