Glass Onion (2022)
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Glass Onion Movie Review
Glass Onion is a 2022 mystery comedy film directed by Rian Johnson and starring Daniel Craig among many others. It’s a good, fun flick, but it’s disappointing in comparison to the original.
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“You would lie for a lie,
but you won’t lie for the truth“
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Tech billionaire Miles Bron invites his friends for a getaway on his private Greek island. When someone turns up dead, Detective Benoit Blanc is put on the case. ‘Knives Out’ was one of my top ten films of 2019, so imagine my surprise and my disappointment when this sequel came out on Netflix and I watched it and I was utterly disappointed by its lack of stronger mystery elements and an overreliance on humor.
This is my biggest gripe with Glass Onion. Yes, the original was quite comedic in many stretches, but this sequel isn’t just humorous, but it’s pretty much a comedy framed as a mystery film. I am all up for deconstructing a genre, but when it has a strong point. This movie dived so deeply into changing the formula and ridiculing the whodunit genre to the point that it became self-parodic itself.
The first half is fantastic. This is where we meet this eclectic group of rich people and where the mystery is introduced. The flashback structure also worked and it enriched the storytelling significantly, providing it a renewed sense of suspense and a cornucopia of different viewpoints. But unfortunately the third act is where the story went fully into parody with the detective character literally proclaiming the crime to be so dumb. Just because a director is aware that his central mystery is dumb does not mean that it still isn’t, well, exceedingly dumb.
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Where the story does succeed is in its thematic exploration of the one percent. Not only are most of the characters depicted quite realistically, but the message given here is sound – all these celebrities will continue to be complacent when presented with an option to speak out about somebody’s abhorrent behavior, but will act when said people lose their financial power. The film also deals with cancel culture, social media influence and the toxic dynamics between the different layers of the wealthy, but the critiquing of these people’s immorality remains the strongest message.
Daniel Craig is phenomenal once again as the funny and utterly charming Benoit Blanc. He has a commanding presence throughout and this is just an iconic detective character already. He got a stronger role in the original, but here he still got to shine and all of his scenes were delightful. The relationship that develops between him and Janelle Monae’s character was quite sweet and Monae killed it as this endearing girl impersonating her rich sister. All of their scenes were superb while the rest of the movie was largely inferior.
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Leslie Odom Jr. was underdeveloped as this scientist character, Kathryn Hahn was underused and too often her character was resorted to screaming outbursts whereas Kate Hudson was wonderful and quite believable as this politically incorrect, vain fashion designer. She was great, but I wanted more of her. The same goes for Dave Bautista, who was actually surprisingly confident in one of his best and funniest roles so far, but unfortunately his role turned out to be rather small.
The problem with these other characters is that they all had the potential to be important, but eventually they were all sidelined in favor of Edward Norton’s character, who is too ridiculous, too dumb and overly parodic. He just did not work for me, thus the entire mystery conceit fell hard on its face. Glass Onion is actually hilarious at times and there is no denying its immense entertainment values. It flies by how fun it is. The dialogue can be sophisticated and witty as well. The movie is also beautifully shot, memorable in the titular imagery and the island itself, and also solidly scored and directed. It’s just a shame that the story was so disappointing.
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Glass Onion is a pretty good movie, but Knives Out was one of the best movies of its year, so this is why the sequel turned out to be immensely disappointing to me. The ensemble cast all did a terrific job with the standouts being Daniel Craig as the now already iconic Benoit Blanc, Janelle Monae in a richly layered performance and Dave Bautista in what is probably his funniest and best role yet. The first half was quite intriguing, beautifully filmed and witty in its dialogue, but it is the second half where the movie fell hard on its face. The complacency of the wealthy was wonderfully satirized, but the ending was too over-the-top. In its goal to deconstruct the whodunit genre, Rian Johnson overdid it and ended up making a ridiculous self-parody that was way too comedic for its own sake. And just because you are fully aware of how dumb your central mystery is, it doesn’t change the fact that it still is, well, exceedingly dumb.
My Rating – 4
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