Old Fashioned Murder Mystery Made Modern

The claustrophobia-inducing clutter of a too-kept mansion, a freshly dead body not more than hours old, a family full of secrets and a detective full of tricks: “Knives Out” may have you suddenly wondering if you should have given Agatha Christie a second chance.

Written and directed by Rian Johnson, the film follows Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) as he drawls his way through interviews with living family members of Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), a wealthy crime writer who croaks a week after his 85th birthday party. Blanc suspects foul play, not only because he was hired anonymously to investigate, but because each family member has enough shady secrets — from extramarital affairs to tuition schemes to plans for the family business — to fill Harlan’s gigantic house. The only person Blanc appears not to suspect, and eventually invites to be his confidante during his investigation, is Harlan’s young and beloved nurse Marta (Ana de Armas), who, as Harlan’s adult children keep assuring her, is like family — until Harlan’s will is read and all hell breaks loose.

Spookily scored and enthusiastically farcical, “Knives Out” teases you into trying to solve the mystery before any of the characters do. The cast revels in their archetypes, from the imperiously matriarchal Jamie Lee Curtis to a delightfully stagey Toni Collette. Chris Evans relishes his bad boy role as Ransom, the family’s arrogant bad apple, who misses the funeral and later goes rogue helping Marta. The plot twists are fun and deftly effectuated, and the squabbling family dynamics and dialogues are well-conceived. Sprinkled liberally throughout are the kinds of conversations that take a turn when a large family is scattered on the political ideological spectrum; the two teenage youngsters of the family spend a decent amount of time volleying insults like “alt-right troll” and “liberal snowflake” at each other, and there are several references to what some may consider small loans of millions of dollars.

Unfortunately, an underpinning political message in “Knives Out” is didactic enough to be disappointing. Thinly veiled threats made about leveraging Marta’s immigration status, should the need ever arise, are too obvious and neatly dealt, and are conspicuously thrown into sharp relief by their contrast with her wide-eyed sweetness. And it should not go unnoticed that the two people who are off the hook — who are scripted as apparently impervious to the possibility of bias against Marta — are the men with the most influence and power: Blanc and Harlan himself. This is less believable than the final cartoonish murder attempt in the film, which is much more fun to witness anyway. If you’re looking for a nuanced fable about the fabric of our nation, look elsewhere — but as a highly entertaining murder mystery, “Knives Out” delivers.