Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery [2022]
“It's a dangerous thing to mistake speaking without thought for speaking the truth.”
It’s rare that a film comes along and makes you question the things you thought you knew. It’s the year 2022 and we’ve seen so many movies, been told so many stories, and read so many books that it’s difficult to truly surprise us as an audience anymore. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery has managed to do exactly that… But not in the way you might think [or want].
In Glass Onion we are once again thrust deep into a character driven whodunit as we follow the rambunctious research of everyone’s favorite modern Sherlock, Benoit Blanc. A dinner party, a murder mystery game, and an unforgettable night await our various satirical characters as they venture forth and comedy ensues. But, when one guest shakes up the shenanigans, will everyone make it out alive? You probably already know the answer, so I won’t belabor the point.
If you like blatant and heavy satire, you’re going to like this film and the characters in it. They are consistently funny – if a little one note –, the happenings are fun, and the story takes a ton of turns that no one will see coming… And therein lies the issue. I’m nearly out of good things to say… And all of those good things are also the film’s biggest weaknesses.
Because the characters are genuinely funny and the satire is so well honed, it makes the parts that fall flat hit even harder, and because the parts of the mystery that are well thought out and well presented are so much fun to unwind, it makes the “gotcha” parts all the more upsetting. There are two really interesting and well conceived mysteries within the 140-minute runtime of Glass Onion. The issue with those mysteries, is that one is actually explored and executed in such a way that the audience gets to have a chance to figure it out, while the other is deceptively edited into the film to trick the audience into thinking something entirely false for almost a third of the runtime [38-minutes to be exact].
Characters’ reactions to events are shown entirely without context in order to mislead our assumptions despite multiple other characters being present who know exactly what's going on, plots are wholly removed for the sake of “reveals” without any prior evidence existing, and any type of clues to the truth are never given, so the audience doesn’t actually get to feel like part of the journey. Glass Onion [the middle specifically] isn’t so much an interesting yarn to unravel as it is an exasperating ghost-train ride where you’re told to keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times. This is made the stranger and more obvious because the film starts with some great editing, fun character introductions, and a mystery you can’t wait to solve. Then, just as said mystery begins to really show… All agency is taken out of your hands and you’re simply read a backstory that has near 0 evidence up to that point.
A large portion of Glass Onion isn’t a mystery at all, it’s a gotcha. And gotchas are not fun, clever, witty, or worth your time.
This is all entirely too bad, because the first act is genuinely interesting and the third presents an equally genuine sleuthing sequence that is plenty of fun. Act two, however, is so droll, unrefined, and clunky that it’s almost fair to call it insulting. Had the film featured any attempt to weave some of this linear nonsense into the story instead of handing it to us on a plate, this could have been a very memorable experience. As is though, it’s rare that a film comes along and makes you question the things you thought you knew, and “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” is so forgettable -- so banal and blatantly lazy -- that it makes me feel like I should revisit the first one, because there’s no way it’s as good as I remember.
“It's so dumb, it's brilliant!
– NO! It's just dumb!”
