I’m very liberal. I believe in all the things you’d expect someone on the leftist/progressive side of the spectrum to support. Do we have our baseline about me now? Good.
So, about Rian Johnson. I’ve made no bones regarding my misgivings about his films, particularly since his budget and audiences have begun to grow. I could get into how his grand ideas are fairly pedestrian (“did you know there’s more than black and white? There’s grey”). But there’s something more fundamentally off-putting about his work that turns me off: a snobbishness that oozes out of his dialogue. It’s only grown worse as he’s thrown all his chips into this detective franchise.
I’m from the South and grew up around people that talk a bit like Benoit Blanc, with the same kind of molasses-y Savannah accent that Daniel Craig employs. And I tend to scoff when people I know who have a more conservative viewpoint tell me that Hollywood has turned its back on them, or use terms like the “Lamestream Media” or whatever is being pushed out by the rightwing propaganda machine. But damn it, when I watch one of these Knives Out movies, I get it. I mean, I really do. Johnson loves to punch down and his characterization of conservatives increasingly comes off as mean-spirited in a way that could only come from a guy who listens to way too much Pod Save America. And as Johnson has become increasingly online, the parodic edge of the thing has dulled exponentially.
In the first Knives Out film, it’s a little eye-rolling, but the setup gave way to this sort of ribbing. Family gatherings have increasingly become the place for political tête-à-têtes, and even if I felt the film didn’t really match its potential, I can grade it on a curve. In the immediate sequel, Glass Onion, Johnson thankfully opted to punch up a bit, taking aim at the billionaire class, though the hypocrisy of a man who scored a half-billion-dollar payday with Netflix trying to sell an “eat the rich” message has its own issues. With this latest entry, Wake Up Dead Man, Johnson returns to small town folk. And he’s back to his old tricks, this time taking aim at organized religion. Oh boy.
The film introduces Rev. Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor), a former boxer turned Catholic priest, who is assigned to a new parish in upstate New York called Chimney Rock (very Stephen King). Jud is a troubled young man with a tough past, but he’s trying to make a fresh start and Chimney Rock, with its tiny population of colorful characters, seems the perfect place. That is, until he meets his senior priest, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). Wicks is a “say it like it is” type that has amassed a fervent following among his church flock. And as you can imagine, he immediately begins to browbeat the meeker Jud, who represents a more caring and uplifting form of the church, in direct contrast to the spiritual holy war that Wicks is stirring up among his faithful.
From a washed up science fiction author (Andrew Scott), to a divorced, struggling doctor (Jeremy Renner), a hard as nails lawyer (Kerry Washington), and a concert cellist desperate to find some relief for her crippling pain (Cailee Spaeny), these are just some of the flock that Jud is trying to win over to his form of the higher calling, while trying to not run afoul of Wicks or his right-hand (Glenn Close). But then something unexpected strikes, as it always does, and Jud finds himself at the center of an investigation that takes this sleepy little hamlet by storm. Enter Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig).
You’ll notice it took the overwhelming majority of a pretty long synopsis before I could mention the franchise’s central character. That’s because it takes well over an hour for Wake Up Dead Man to actually start. Don’t get me wrong: when earned, I don’t mind a setup that luxuriates in its running time. If the payoff is worth it, fine. But there’s testing my patience, and then there’s slapping viewers in the face. By the time Blanc shows up to liven things up a touch (Craig, as always, is a pleasure in this role), I was hoping things were going to wrap up pretty quickly. But no, because Wake Up Dead Man is somehow a merciless two and a half hours long. And thus, there’s more sleuthing to do.
Rather than spend an entire review axe-grinding, I should note that there are parts of this new Knives Out mystery that I admired at the outset. Jud is basically a Chesterton/Father Brown stand-in, and he makes for, easily, the most appealing sidekick that Blanc has had yet in this series. There’s also a turn toward the back half that aims to evoke Poe, with a number of gothic trappings and even the appearance of something that may be supernatural in origin. But, much like the yammering about John Dickson Carr‘s The Hollow Man throughout, it amounts to little. This is one mystery that just gets more and more convoluted as it moves forward, and between the pretzels of logic that Johnson’s script wraps itself up in and the endless “tell, tell, tell” of the dialogue, by the second hour, I felt like my head was in a vice.
In the previous films, even if I’m much cooler toward them than most, the performances are fun, the cast is having a good time, and there’s a modicum of character development. Not so here, as Johnson has supplied his thinnest crop of potential suspects yet. A who’s who of characters that have a single trait each. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a movie where Scott felt wasted, but somehow Johnson accomplished it, and that goes triple for Spaeny, Renner, Washington, and Thomas Haden Church. Other than Craig and O’Connor, only Brolin is given some real meat to chew on. Sure, he’s just a stand-in for the usual rightwing demagoguery that’s worked its way deep into our mainstream culture now, but at least it’s a fully fleshed-out character.
And to that end, there are plenty of pokes and prods at MAGA, DOGE, yadda yadda, but it almost feels perfunctory. Unlike the first film, there’s just no zing at all. That resigned defeat permeates through the entirety of Wake Up Dead Man, even if it’s not intentional. At two and a half hours, it’s less of a compelling mystery and more of an endurance test, one that not even the charm of Benoit Blanc can make worthwhile.
