04/01/26

Netflix

Early January is traditionally a time for catching up with those films we didn’t manage to see at the cinema. Wake Up Dead Man, Rian Johnson’s third entry in the Knives Out franchise, has been sitting patiently on Netflix for quite some time, but I’ll confess that I haven’t been in a great hurry to tick it off the list, not having been as enchanted by the two previous instalments as many others. So it’s perhaps inevitable that I enjoy this one more than its predecessors, mostly because of its caustic sense of humour.

Catholic priest, Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’ Connor), is hastily despatched to a rural parish in upstate New York. A former boxer, he has punched out an obnoxious fellow priest in an argument and now needs to keep a low profile. He’s clearly come to the wrong place. The parish is run by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), who runs Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude in a dictatorial fashion, though his fire and brimstone approach to sermonsing means that his congregation grows ever sparser.

So perhaps it’s little wonder that it’s Wicks who is mysteriously murdered and Duplenticy who appears the most likely culprit. But of course, after a decent interval, along comes ‘the world’s greatest detective’, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), to investigate a story that has more twists and turns than a snake on a bed of itching powder…

All the usual suspects are in place, portrayed by a starry cast of A-listers, this time including Glenn Close, Andrew Scott, Jeremy Renner and Cailee Spainey. I have fun trying to come up with possible solutions to the central mystery even if the story grows ever more unlikely as it progresses. In this endeavour I’m only partially successful – I spot some possibilities but apply them to the wrong suspect. I also think I spy a sizeable plot-hole in there, but perhaps I’m being too picky. I’m suitably entertained by the snarky, anti-Catholic digs and the anti-Trump snipes sprinkled through proceedings .

Will there be more Knives Out films? I hope so. Because, for my money, this is the best of the series so far.

4 stars

Philip Caveney