With his James Bond run concluded, Daniel Craig has already solidified his next franchise by playing Benoit Blanc, the old-fashioned Southern detective who solved “Knives Out” in 2018 and now takes on “Glass Onion” (Netflix). Through two films, writer-director Rian Johnson has drawn on Poirot and other legendary sleuths. But Blanc has become his own man, especially with Craig improving his handle on the dialect.
A detective born at the wrong time?
I think what distinguishes Blanc from his forebearers is that he’d like to solve complex, old-school mysteries, but he’s stuck in modern times. At one point in “Glass Onion,” Blanc is annoyed at a solution to a murder being “dumb” – and also at himself for looking past the obvious answer, so much does he want to utilize his deeper skills.
On a macro level, though, the plotting of “Glass Onion” isn’t dumb. It starts with shades of “And Then There Were None” as several colleagues converge on the private island of billionaire entrepreneur Miles Bron (Edward Norton). But it goes in many different directions before reaching the conclusion, often using flashbacks and re-framings of previous scenes. It’s complex, but I understood every step, and was engrossed.
“Glass Onion” (2022)
Director: Rian Johnson
Writer: Rian Johnson
Stars: Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Kate Hudson
It’s fair to call this a comedy, but the film’s sense of humor is hard to pin down. Generally, it’s a matter of the cast giving off good vibes – even though their characters are not good people – more so than jokes and punchlines.
Kate Hudson plays Birdie, a disgraced model who got canceled for tweeting “jewy,” not realizing it is a slur. Dave Bautista’s gun-toting Duke has a successful right-wing YouTube channel. Kathryn Hahn’s Claire is a cynical, climbing left-wing politician. Hahn is so associated with comedies that she’s mildly funny simply by being on screen.
Selfish characters can sour a viewer’s goodwill – see “Violent Night” – but this cast makes sure to maintain an overall vibe of absurdist fun. Birdie, in particular, is so ridiculously dim (see also her misunderstanding of “sweat shop”) that she’s rather lovable.
The shallow rich … or richly shallow
That said, Janelle Monae is the film’s heart as Andi, a woman who was “Social Networked” by Miles (he makes legal maneuvers to gain sole control of Alpha). Andi has an obvious motive to kill her former partner, but Johnson smoothly steers clear of the obvious. In doing so, Monae gets a chance to show impressive range.
Keeping “Glass Onion” from elite status is the ending, which takes on the rich in a way that’s both on-the-nose and ill-defined. A vague but steady dislike and distrust of “disruptors” (people who shake up the status quo with new inventions) runs through the narrative, even though Miles’ speech about the importance of disruptors is legit (even if he himself is not).
Johnson links “successful entrepreneurs” and “the reprehensible rich” almost every time the film brings up either trait. He positions everyone except Craig’s and Monae’s characters as smarmy and self-interested.
Yet the island abode, topped by Miles’ Glass Onion upper floor office, is a gorgeous piece of architecture. It was filmed at a villa on a Greek island, so the sense of the actors being on a “working vacation” is not accidental. I wanted to live like Miles, at least for a while.
A good time is had by most
As with “Knives Out,” “Glass Onion” casts good actors who want to be there, so it’s not a case of anyone phoning it in. I will say, though, that these Benoit Blanc films are not where you’d go for comedy, even of the satirical type. I smiled more than I laughed, and I found the message-laden grand finale too extreme to mean anything.
Because of what it does well, I had enough goodwill toward “Glass Onion” to allow the indulgences, but there’s no reason a movie like this needs to pass the 2-hour mark. However, Johnson and Craig are on to something with this formula of throwing a proper old sleuth into cases that annoy him with their modernness and – on a micro level — “dumbness.”
If Johnson keeps coming up with good casts, settings and plots, Craig might someday be known as Blanc as much as he’s known as Bond.