Written and Directed by Rian Johnson. (Spoilers Within)
With: Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc, a private detective. His ways are indeed mysterious. He’s no Hercule Poirot, Gideon Fell or Lord Peter Wimsey, for sure. He’s scarcely the clever Benoit Blanc of the first Knives Outing. Here, he’s befuddled by operatives of the Church.
THE DEVOUT Suspects: Josh O’Connor as Rev. Jud Duplenticy, a young priest and former prize fighter who reformed after killing a man in the ring (shades of Robert E. Lee Pruitt in From Here to Eternity). File under Cliche: Guilt. A schizophrenic character. That Josh O’Connor sure emotes.
Glenn Close as Martha Delacroix, church lady and Wicks’ right-hand woman. Unless you are complete fucking moron by the second reel you’ll realize she’s the prime motivator in this farce.
Josh Brolin as Msg. Wicks. Satan in priest’s clothing. The opportunity to kill him would be the grand prize in the parish lottery. He runs no Bingo games but will return the nation back to Christ, after he smites the wicked, that means you, Mr Smarty Pants Antifa.
Jeremy Renner as Dr. Nat Sharp FACDP ( Fellow of the American College of Drunken Physicians). The town croaker, Kerry Washington as Vera Draven, Esq., a crabby lawyer. Who can blamer? Andrew Scott as Lee Ross, a best-selling author. Clearly modeled on science fiction master and mystic paranoid Philip K. Dick. Cailee Spaeny as Simone Vivane, a disabled former concert cellist. Partly based on cellist Jacqueline du Pré.
Daryl McCormack as Cy Draven, Vera’s adoptive son, an failed politician who just can’t connect with the public. Such a creep even the Trump people wouldn’t have him. Thomas Haden Church as Samson Holt, Recovering boozer. groundskeeper and Martha’s lover. A dunce.
Them’s the murder suspects, Vern. I wouldn’tna sent a one of ’em out for a pack of gum in fear they’d return in five years with no gum, but a cock en bull story about alien abduction, anal probes, lost time and no change from the five I give ’em. Mila Kunis as Geraldine Scott, a local police chief. Barney Fife’s kid Sister. Jeffrey Wright as Langstrom, a bishop who assigns Duplenticy to Wicks’ church. A waste of a good actor.
I doubt any movie in the Knives Out series would exist save for Agatha Christie. She proved to by the master of the surprise “Fooled Ya!” ending with And Then There Were None, and Witness for the Prosecution. I suppose film critics who gave this Knives Out nonsense good notice have never actually read a detective story. Or much else for that matter. The level of concentration required to follow a well plotted mystery is beyond someone who finds the label on a ketchup bottle a insurmountable challenge.
Writer Johnson ”borrows” a story device used by Christie in both Evil Under the Sun and Death on the Nile, and in Don Siegel’s 1945 film The Verdict. (A reader’s key to guessing the killer’s identity is not in what you see, but is in what you don’t see.) Johnson’s attempt at originality is so transparent with convoluted absurdity it qualifies as parody. Ellery Queen would challenge the reader to solve the mystery along with him with the same clues he had. The only challenge here is to suspend disbelief at the absurd story twists. It is a murder? A conspiracy to murder? A treasure hunt? A search for a lost diamond? A crisis of faith? Shut up and drink the Kool-aid, Vern.
A key element of the crime; a radio controlled exploding blood bag, needed introduction by a character much like James Bond’s Q. The viewer must get by with Benoit Blanc’s speculation. Blanc approaches clues the same way believers in ancient astronauts identify huge drawings atop a plateau in Peru. “Could these lines indicate the presence of an ancient intergalactic spaceport? Hmm.”
The story contains elements of The Passover Plot (the the crucifixion and resurrection was a scheme so in 2000 years some knucklehead could preach in a megachurch in Kansas) for all you Biblical Conspiracy fans. The most disappointing aspect of Wake Up Dead Man is it’s very unChristian moral, as I understand Christian morality. Commandment Eight: Thou shall not steal.
Rian Johnson makes the case through the unjustly accused Father Jud Duplenticy that it is good to steal from someone simply because you dislike him. Father Jud seeks to bring his parishioners to Jesus, but first he must bring himself to Moses.
Rian Johnson might consider buying a copy of John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, and Writing the Private Eye Novel: A Handbook by the Private Eye Writers of America’, he could use the help.
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