Glass Onion Review: The Knives Out’s Sequel loses its sharp edge

Many factors helped to make Rian Johnson’s ambitious second film, Knives Out, a hit. For example, his love for the discarded genre of murder mysteries provided the backdrop for an array of other factors such as Daniel Craig’s final James Bond film and Sean Connery’s return as the mentor to Craig’s new character. The top-to-bottom immaculate casting was also a factor: Don Johnson is a sleazy husband with no impulse control because he always has been!

This film is an oddball combination of successful nostalgia and patient, quirky humor. Chunky fall knits and sharp tweed overcoats; Jamie Lee Curtis resplendent in fuchsia, topped with a shock of white hair; Chris Evans’ growling 1970s BMW and beloved cabled sweater; overcast skies and low, cool November light; a halo of knives as decor; a universe of creepy knickknacks, all stuffed into a creaking New England mansion, somberly redolent of the Old World. (But as Rian Johnson’s script wickedly notes, purchased from a Pakistani real-estate mogul in the 1980s.) It’s a clever, funny movie that holds its self-consciousness at just the right distance, while still being loyal to John Carpenter’s specific kind of nerdy horror.

Consider the mood board for the Netflix-funded sequel, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. It explores mind games and murder most foul among the most privileged. This time around, you’ll see a Porsche rotating on a rooftop turntable, azure seas and skies under a blazing Greek sun, personalized cocktail glasses and chiming smartphones, glass sculptures and gizmos adorning a fantasy tech palace with a huge onion-shaped cupola, loud prints, loose linens, neckerchiefs, sun hats, and codpiece-mounted handguns.

Many factors helped to make Rian Johnson’s ambitious second film, Knives Out, a hit. For example, his love for the discarded genre of murder mysteries provided the backdrop for an array of other factors such as Daniel Craig’s final James Bond film and Sean Connery’s return as the mentor to Craig’s new character. The top-to-bottom immaculate casting was also a factor: Don Johnson is a sleazy husband with no impulse control because he always has been!

This film is an oddball combination of successful nostalgia and patient, quirky humor. Chunky fall knits and sharp tweed overcoats; Jamie Lee Curtis resplendent in fuchsia, topped with a shock of white hair; Chris Evans’ growling 1970s BMW and beloved cabled sweater; overcast skies and low, cool November light; a halo of knives as decor; a universe of creepy knickknacks, all stuffed into a creaking New England mansion, somberly redolent of the Old World. (But as Rian Johnson’s script wickedly notes, purchased from a Pakistani real-estate mogul in the 1980s.) It’s a clever, funny movie that holds its self-consciousness at just the right distance, while still being loyal to John Carpenter’s specific kind of nerdy horror

Consider the mood board for the Netflix-funded sequel, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. It explores mind games and murder most foul among the most privileged. This time around, you’ll see a Porsche rotating on a rooftop turntable, azure seas and skies under a blazing Greek sun, personalized cocktail glasses and chiming smartphones, glass sculptures and gizmos adorning a fantasy tech palace with a huge onion-shaped cupola, loud prints, loose linens, neckerchiefs, sun hats, and codpiece-mounted handguns.

Most everyone is surprised to see Andi Brand arrive, who had built Alpha with Miles but was ruthlessly cut out of the company. Everyone is equally surprised when Benoit Blanc is invited along. However, Bron has planned a murder mystery party where he will be the “victim” so at least the world’s greatest detective fits the theme. Revealing any more would interfere with Johnson’s intricate clockwork, but of course, someone does end up dead for real and someone else has an interest in making sure there’s a celebrity sleuth on the scene.

With titles like Glass Onion and Knives Out, before he wrote the critically acclaimed Endgame, John Johnson planned to reveal how a novel was constructed. In Glass Onion, however, he divided the Sherlock Holmes canon into two libraries: a public library with 221 copies of A Study in Scarlet and 221 copies of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and a secret library with no more than 221 copies of any given title. This provided clues for readers but posed yet another mystery: who is collecting these books?

Structurally, it’s an impressive magic trick. Some of the devices he uses to pull it off are overused, but that choice seems fitting for such a theatrical enterprise and the work is sound: All of the pieces fit together. The gamble has other consequences, however. Some characters are deepened and enriched by the shift in perspective, but others are weakened. Crucially, genre conventions require Johnson to pull off a twist at the conclusion to match the surprise of the twist he engineered halfway through, but when he gets there, it turns out he’s run himself out of options and his payoff doesn’t land as expected.

Johnson doesn’t care about finding the murderer, but taking their whole world down in a blazing glory in Knives Out, made in the immigration-obsessed Trump era. He asks whose country America is with his stunning closing shot. In Glass Onion, made amid COVID and focused on easy targets such as Big Tech, liberal politics, and online image-making-he just lashes out left and right at them. It’s muddled stuff with a series of poor caricatures which he has difficulty associating naturally.

Even though they could have been more impressive, the show still shines thanks to Jenny Eagan’s extravagant costumes. Dave Bautista manages to be both boorish and puppyish as Duke, the insecure man-child trapped in the body of a rocky outcrop. Jennifer Hudson is hilarious as Birdie, a queen of glamorous idiocy who’s been canceled for her tweets so many times that her assistant won’t let her touch her phone. Brad Pitt is excellent as Elon Musk-alike Ernie Barnes, mining a deep seam of douchiness without dimming his immense charisma. Janelle Monáe offers the most sophisticated and multifaceted performance, delivering sincerity, simmering anger, and realness that none of the other actors can touch.

This is also a film in which we get to watch Daniel Craig play Among Us in the bath with Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim over Zoom. The film riffs on Craig’s macho Bond image in some delightful, surprising ways, but Craig and Johnson both push the dapper detective away from Agatha Christie’s famed detective Hercule Poirot, and towards his “derivative” descendant, The Pink Panther’s Inspector Clouseau. Whereas Peter Sellers’ idiot investigator in Inspector Clouseau was no fool, of course, Benoit Blanc does look a bit like a figure of fun at times as he descends into a swimming pool dressed in a striped two-piece bathing suit and cravat.

A great mystery, like Columbo -— whom Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne will soon pay tribute to in their detective series Poker Face — doesn’t need hidden depths. They are the key that turns the lock, opens the door, and lets the light in on our mistakes. We don’t need to know what brought them to their profession — or why they do it — but their work needs to be flashy, fun, and star-studded. That’s what Glass Onion does.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery opens in limited release on Nov. 23, and debuts on Netflix on Dec. 23.