Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Movie Review)

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Three years ago, Knives Out introduced us to Daniel Craig as New Orleans Detective Benoit Blanc who successfully investigated the death of a millionaire mystery writer in his Massachusetts mansion. Glass Onion shifts the setting to a private Greek island owned by billionaire entrepreneur Miles Bron (Edward Norton), co-founder of Alpha. The latter is a high-tech company that is about to release an alternative fuel source known as Klear.

Bron invites five old friends, formerly known as the “Disruptors,” for a weekend murder mystery party at his Glass Onion mansion. The guests include Alpha head scientist Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odoms, Jr.), Connecticut Governor Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn), fashion designer Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson) and her assistant Peg (Jessica Henwick), and pistol-packing Duke Cody (Dave Bautista) a men’s rights propagandist who streams on Twitch and his girlfriend Whiskey (Madelyn Cline), and finally former Alpha CEO Cassandra “Andi” Brand (Janelle Monae). Detective Blanc appears to be the odd man out until we later discover the reason for his invitation to the party.

After everyone has arrived, Miles shows off his extensive art collection including the original Mona Lisa painting, on loan from the Louvre.  Blanc quickly solves Miles’s murder mystery when he discovers a remote-controlled crossbow on a sculpture that shoots Miles with a harmless paintball arrow. Andi abruptly leaves the party and when Duke suddenly dies after drinking from Miles’s glass, his pistol goes missing and the rest of the group disperses. Andi gets shot by a shadowy figure but Blanc discovers the bullet was blocked by a journal in her jacket pocket. He next has Andi fake her death, and we finally get the backstory of how Blanc met with Helen Brand (Janelle Monae), Andi’s twin, who hires him to investigate her sister’s death the previous week—yet to be reported to the media. Blanc receives Andi’s original invitation to the Glass Onion from Helen and asks her to pose as her dead twin sister to help him investigate the case.

Helen had discovered Andi’s napkin with her original formula for Klear written on it that will prove Miles was not Klear’s inventor. Helen suspects Andi’s murder was in response to her trying to block the release of Klear when she found it was a dangerous explosive. Each member of the Disruptors had a motive killing for Andi and had visited her home the day she was murdered. As the group reassembles in the great hall of the Glass Onion, there will be an apocalyptic night of final reckoning and well-deserved justice will meted out to the film’s villain.

In his recreation of another Agatha Christie genre murder mystery, writer-director Ryan Johnson has his Knives Out cinematographer Steve Yedlin raise the visual bar to a much higher level with eye-popping sets populated by legions of glass sculptures and hyper-realistic décor. The cast is not quite as strong as that of the original film but Daniel Craig keeps the wheels turning while his castmates do the best they can with a script that lacks the dramatic tension or cleverness of its predecessor. Unlike the original Knives Out, the bad guy in Glass Onion is identified very early in the proceedings making much of what follows rather anticlimactic. There is also a character named Derol (Noah Segan) who wanders in and out of the set without much reason to be there.

There have been countless numbers of mystery films featuring groups of people stranded on isolated islands where their lives are endangered by an evil genius. While Glass Onion is not the best example of this cinematic genre, there is at least enough eye-candy here to keep viewers engaged. And for those wondering about the title, just take “A Magical Mystery Tour” back to the Beatles’ White Album where the rumors were circulating about Paul’s supposed death. In this context, Glass Onion was a reference to a glass-lidded coffin where the body could be seen. Recommended.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is streaming now on Netflix

• Rating Certificate: PG-13 for strong language, some violence, sexual material and drug content
• Studios & Distributors: Netflix | T-Street
• Country: USA
• Language: English
• Run Time: 140 Mins.
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Director: Rian Johnson
• Written By: Rian Johnson
• Release Date: 23 December 2022