-REVIEW-000-1.gif)
This one I had for some time in my bucket list and yesterday on my way home decided to spin it up, Wake Up Dead Man A Knives Out Mystery came out on Netflix in mid December after been in theaters for like two seconds; Netflix stuff, I gotta say Netflix really screwed the pooch on this release strategy, they gave Glass Onion way more theater time a few years back and people showed up but now they throwing this one in way fewer places witch makes zero damn sense when everyone clearly wants these movies on big screens. The whole vibe of this franchise works so much better with a crowd specially all the comedy bits and Rian Johnson physical humor stuff that lands way harder when your sitting with other people who are laughing too, I get Netflix wants eyeballs on there platform but come on man let people experience this properly first. Daniel Craig is back doing his Benoit Blanc thing and I cannot get enough of how weird this dude is with that thick southern accent that should absolutely not work at all but somehow Craig just owns it and makes you believe it, this time he is investigating a murder at this church up in upstate New York where the leader Monsignor Jefferson Wicks gets killed in what looks like an impossible locked room situation. The cast is absolutely stacked too you got Glenn Close doing her thing, Jeremy Renner shows up, Andrew Scott brings his energy, Kerry Washington plays a lawyer and there is a bunch of other solid actors filling out the ensemble, Josh OConnor really stood out to me tho because he plays this young priest Father Jud who becomes the main suspect and goes thru this whole crisis about his faith and you can actually feel how exhausted and worn down he gets as the movie keeps going, it feels heavy and real without been all preachy about religion witch I appreciated a lot.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14364480/
- Platform: NETFLIX
Rottentomatoes Rating
Source
The murder mystery itself kept me guessing the whole way thru because I was able to figure out like maybe one or two pieces of it but when the final solution came together it still surprised me and I was not expecting it to be so drastically, everything clicks into place in a way that makes you wanna immediately rewatch and catch all the little clues you definitely missed on the first viewing, thats how I felt but I didnt have time for a full rewatch so just look online to understand what I probably miss. I think this one is actually better than Glass Onion which felt way too silly at times almost like it was tryin too hard to be funny, this one has real weight behind it while still keeping all the humor and fun detective work that makes these Knives Out movies so enjoyable to sit thru for two plus hours. The whole religion angle adds this extra layer that Glass Onion just did not have, your watching Blanc do his detective thing but there is also all this stuff about faith and forgiveness and what it means to believe in something when the people around you are complete hypocrites, its heavier material than what we got before but Johnson handles it pretty well even if it gets a little heavy handed at times. Josh Brolin absolutely chews up every scene he is in as Monsignor Wicks this charismatic but domineering church leader who used to be kinda famous and still got that control over everyone just below the surface, Glenn Close plays this church lady Martha who knows everyone secrets and filed away every dirty detail for like decades, Jeremy Renner is a drunk doctor trying to win back his wife and failing miserably at it. All these characters got there own motivations for maybe killing this priest and the movie does a good job keeping you confused about who actually did it until the very end, altho I will say some of the twists are so convoluted that it almost becomes too much like Johnson just kept adding more layers when maybe he should have stopped.
Source
The first thirty minutes or so dragged a bit for me because Blanc does not even show up until way later in the movie and your just following Josh OConnors priest character who is fine but becomes way more interesting once he turns into the main suspect, once Craig finally arrives tho the whole thing picks up and becomes way more fun to watch. His Blanc is just such a breath of fresh air with his weird mannerisms and that absurd accent and the way he pieces together clues that nobody else is seeing, Craig clearly loves playing this role and it shows in every single scene he is in, you can tell he is having a blast being this eccentric genius detective. The religious symbolism is all over this movie sometimes in ways that work really well and sometimes in ways that feel kinda forced, there is this whole thing about a missing fortune that the founder of the church hid somewhere and everyones trying to find it, they call it Eves Apple and its actually this eighty million dollar diamond that Wicks grandfather Prentice swallowed before he died to hide it from his daughter Grace, which is insane when you think about it. It ties into the themes about temptation and greed and all that biblical stuff and works better than it probably should because Johnson commits to it fully instead of just throwing in some surface level religious imagery and calling it a day, he actually engages with questions about why people believe what they believe and whether faith can survive when the people representing it are total pieces of shit, it does get a little on the nose at times like there is this moment where the camera goes from dark to light as someone explains why the church exists and your like okay I get it although its not subtle but I guess murder mysteries are not really supposed to be subtle anyway.
Source
The actual murder and how it gets solved involves so many twists and turns that by the end I was almost losing track of what was real and what was fake, there is locked room mystery elements where they gotta figure out how someone got stabbed in a closet that nobody could get into, there is secret recordings and hidden motives and people lying about where they were and what they saw. Some of it stretches how much you could believe on their version by far like there is a point where your supposed to accept that someone staged this elaborate thing with demon heads and remote controls and I was just like alright sure why not at this point, but even when its getting ridiculous its still entertaining to watch unfold. The big speech at the end where Blanc explains everything is classic murder mystery stuff and Johnson plays with your expectations by having Blanc say he does not know what happened only to reveal later that he knew the whole time and was just waiting for the killer to confess, its a nice touch that ties into the forgiveness theme during the whole movie. Glenn Close character Martha ends up being the one who masterminded it all along with help from Jeremy Renners doctor Nat Sharp who actually did the killing and when she confesses she poisons herself at the same time so she dies after finally confessing her sins, its played as this redemptive moment but I dunno if it fully lands because we have not spent enough time with her character to really care that much. The diamond fortune ends up hidden inside the crypt at the end which is such an obvious place when you think about it, there is also this whole thing with the groundskeeper Samson who gets killed too and it just keeps getting more complicated as it goes.
#skiptvads, #inleo, #hive, #netflix, #knivesout, #wakeupdeadman, #danielcraig, #benoitblanc, #ryanjohnson, #joshbrolin, #glennclose, #joshoconnor, #jeremyrenner, #mystery, #murder, #detective, #priest, #church, #religion, #thriller, #sequel, #movie, #review, #faith, #confession, #ensemble, #twist, #cinema
Posted Using INLEO