Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery – Film Review

Tech billionaire Miles Bron invites his friends for a getaway on his private Greek island. When someone turns up dead, Detective Benoit Blanc is put on the case.

The knives are out once more with Rian Johnson‘s extremely sharp and witty follow-up to his 2019 murder mystery comedy Knives Out in the form of Glass Onion, which aims to expand this new franchise in some bold and daring ways, with most of it working immensely well.

The first Knives Out is one of my all-time movies. I’ve probably seen it about eight times or so now, and yet it never gets old. There’s just something so endearing and fun about the whole thing, despite the fact that it revolves around the death of this man. All of the cast and crew came together to make a truly unforgettable film that holds up incredibly well.

Glass Onion manages to carry this series forward in exciting ways, although it’s not even close to being as phenomenal as the first outing. But I get the feeling that if the franchise keeps up the way it is right now, then even a weaker Benoit Blanc story is still going to be really, really good.

By far the biggest issue I have with this film is the first act. It’s painfully slow. It takes a good hour for the actual murder in the film to happen, seeing as how that first hour is spent building up our cast of characters while also re-introducing us to the character of Benoit Blanc and showing what he’s been up to since the events of the first film.

It makes sense as to why these scenes are here, but they definitely went on for way too long, and the film could’ve seriously benefited from having some of this stuff trimmed down considerably to allow for a much smoother pace. As soon as the murder occurs, the film picks up tremendously and never lets up from that point onward.

It’s also here in which all of our actors are given their chance to shine, particularly Daniel Craig who reprises his role as everyone’s favorite Southern detective, Benoit Blanc. This is honestly one of my favorite movie characters, period. He’s so unbelievably goofy and funny and there is no better actor to portray this man than Craig. His dialogue here is knee-slappingly funny.

There’s also Janelle Monáe in the role of Cassandra “Andi” Brand, who is easily the most nuanced actor of the bunch, and she also gets to play the film’s most interesting and layered character. There’s so much we don’t know about Andi when the film starts but as the story progresses, we slowly start to see who she really is.

Dave Bautista is hilarious as Duke Cody, a YouTube star with an extremely big ego, as well as Edward Norton in the role of the billionaire Miles Bron. Madelyn Cline is also a standout as Whiskey, as is Kathryn Hahn as Claire Debella. The cast here is phenomenal.

The film also just looks plain amazing. Steve Yedlin returns from the first film to shoot this one and it shows. Nearly every frame is brimming with life and they all tell wonderful stories. The musical score from Nathan Johnson is fantastic, as is the editing by Bob Ducsay.

As soon as Glass Onion concluded, I found myself salivating for a third entry in this series immediately, which thankfully, is already confirmed to be happening. The only problem is that we’re probably going to have to wait a while for it to be made. In the meantime, however, go see Glass Onion for some good old fashioned murder mystery fun.

Although it’s nowhere near as good as the first, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is a relentlessly entertaining and fantastically clever murder mystery boasting an incredibly talented, multi-layered cast.