Glass Onion: this Knives Out sequel is a well-paced screwball mystery

Daniel Craig is perhaps the only screen actor to have successfully emulated iconic swimwear looks originated by both Ursula Andress and Peter Ustinov. To Craig’s sultry emergence from the waves as James Bond in Casino Royale (2006), which echoed Andress’s as Honey Ryder in Dr. No (1960), we can now add his poolside appearance as Benoit Blanc in Glass Onion, sporting a bold update of the absurd aquatic two-piece worn by Ustinov’s Hercule Poirot in Evil Under the Sun (1982). Versatile!

Reference and recapitulation are at the heart of Rian Johnson’s new film, a follow-up to Knives Out (2019), his popular reinvention of the country-house whodunit. Once again, Blanc – “last of the gentleman sleuths” – is called upon to investigate foul play among a motley group of wealthy deplorables and to stick up for a diamond in the rough at risk of becoming collateral damage. The gang here includes Edward Norton’s narcissistic tech billionaire, Kate Hudson’s heedless fashionista, Kathryn Hahn’s calculating politician, Dave Bautista’s macho influencer and Janelle Monáe as Norton’s enigmatic former business partner. All have gathered at the billionaire’s private Greek island for a murder-mystery game that turns out – you guessed it – to be more deadly than anticipated.

Glass Onion shifts the action from Knives Out’s stately pile to a sun-drenched locale, site of comparably lethal shenanigans in Evil Under the Sun and another favourite of Johnson’s, The Last of Sheila (1973). There are numerous references to those pictures and, like them, Glass Onion offers plenty of red herrings and rug-pulls, characters who turn out to be smarter or dumber than expected or to not be who they seem (or, bathetically, to never have had much point at all). It’s one of the film’s pleasures that, as well as offering affectionate pastiches and reconfigurations of its generic forebears, it also pastiches and reconfigures itself, not least through a satisfying midpoint twist.

Mechanics are all in a whodunit and, while Glass Onion is even longer than its 130-minute predecessor, it’s better paced. It’s also augmented by some ingenious plot points and suspense mechanisms. Who knew that a trickle of condiment could be as compelling a ticking-clock device as the dwindling champagne in Notorious (1946)? Its tone, meanwhile, is markedly goofier than in Knives Out, less heightened tongue-in-cheek than flat-out screwball, particularly in its early sequences. Much of this is down to the cast’s willingness to be silly. Channelling Ustinov’s Poirot, Craig ramps up the guileless interloper shtick to great effect, Blanc often serving as faux-naïf straight man for the grotesques around him while retaining his acuity and decency. Hudson is the standout, bringing just the right balance of charisma, calculation and inanity to her frequently cancelled fashion-designer character. The film is replete with star cameos and celebrity references, contributing to the larky sensibility. (Tennis lessons from Serena Williams, anyone? Or a drop of Jared Leto’s hard kombucha?) Rick Heinrichs’s production design is suitably futuristic and outré: when Craig reaches the island, you’d be excused for thinking he was Bond arriving at a villain’s lair, robo-porters and all. There’s also some cathartic Covid-era snark, the pandemic providing the pretext for timely social satire here in the way that Trump-era culture wars did in Knives Out.

The knockabout stuff is great fun but goofy humour can wear thin. Human interest goes a long way, especially in a film this lengthy, and it’s in relatively short supply here. There’s an early reference to the classical fugue form, and how it takes on depth and complexity through the repetition with variance of apparent simplicity. And it’s true that, as more narrative layers are retrospectively revealed, things that seemed shallow take on more resonance. But only up to a point.

Knives Out leaned heavily into caricature and contrivance, at times straining credulity even for the genre around certain aspects of motivation and action. But its characters felt lived-in, the family dynamic a plausible mix of more and less rational grudges and soft spots. Glass Onion’s characters are broader and flatter, bouncing off one another to comic effect but reading as schematic pieces of the puzzle rather than human beings; certainly, they never convince as a supposedly longstanding friendship group. The plot holes are bigger here too, which would matter less if these aspects of tone and characterisation were more consistently compelling, the running time shorter, or both. It’s easy, though, to imagine another case for Blanc, and further recapitulations on the theme.

► Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is in UK cinemas now.