Film review: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

After the “mixed” reaction to his Last Jedi effectively scuppered both Disney's concluding trilogy, and the chances of making his own three-film Star Wars spin-off, writer/director Rian Johnson needed a great, original idea to get his career back on track.

Instead, he came up with was an Agatha Christie-style country house murder mystery with his take on Hercule Poirot, Benoit Blanc (Craig.)

Another whodunnit; just what the world was crying out for. But, ta-da, Knives Out turned out to be a career-saving success and made over $300million worldwide on a budget of $40 million. Who saw that coming?

It was smart and funny, but its sucGcess might have been partly down to cinema-goers having been starved of mid-range, grown-up entertainment in a market that has been split between multi-million dollar blockbuster sequels, and low-budget efforts - with little in between.

A shame then that apart from this brief cinema engagement, the sequel will be available exclusively on your TV via Netflix. Low investment, high return is always a happy formula, but doesn’t paying a reported $469 million for two more films defeat the purpose of the exercise?

For the follow-up, Johnson swaps Radiohead for The Beatles in the title and gives his Poirot substitute an Evil Under The Sun homage, solving a murder in an exotic location amongst a slightly less star-studded ensemble than the first one.

Reviewers have been bombarded with No Spoilers entreaties, so other than that all I can say is that the walrus isn’t Paul, but there is an actual glass onion, although I won’t say what it is. The level of invention is on a par with the first, it’s probably funnier, and Craig is more assured and comfortable in the role of Blanc.

While the first paid homage to the wintry 70s cinema of Hal Ashby, this is more of a Moore-era Bond film. The creaking old money mansion has been replaced by the brash, shiny palace of a startup billionaire. The film is full of surprises, but in its use of flashbacks and revisiting events from different perspectives it follows the structure of the first movie very closely.

Plus, though the target has changed slightly, the satirical jibes are still pointed at wealth and white privilege. Ultimately, these detective dramas with a social conscience are their own biggest spoiler.Daniel Craig stars as Benoit Blanc in Glass Onion (Image: Courtesy of Netflix)

Directed by Rian Johnson. Starring Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Kate Hudson, Janelle Monae, Leslie Odom Jr, Dave Bautista and Kathryn Hahn. In cinemas now, streaming on Netflix from December 23. Running time: 139 mins.