Glass Onion

Daniel Craig

Rian Johnson's Glass Onion is the kind of well crafted entertainment that Hollywood is thought incapable of doing anymore. Whether they be products of Hollywood's heyday or of the current era's streaming behemoths, audience pleasing features like this one tend to be critically neglected, now as then, compared to films with a more socially conscious bent. Ultimately, art wins out. The contributions of Cary Grant in films like Holiday or Bringing Up Baby still entertain today while the concurrent performances of Paul Muni, much lauded at the time, seem artificial and period bound. Not that Glass Onion is devoid of social commentary, but Mr. Johnson's packaging of it within the murder mystery format is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down. Furthermore, Johnson's lampooning of Elon Musk and social media influencers, some of the easiest targets for satire of our era, signal that he is making this film for the widest possible audience.

What most impressed me about Glass Onion was the precision of its storytelling. As David Bordwell has pointed out, the first Knives Out film boasted an intricate story structure that would have generated a lot more comment in serious film journals if they had been found in an art film. If anything, the structure of Glass Onion is even more complex, with Johnson utilizing multiple flashbacks as Chinese boxes; a trope underlined by the elaborate boxes the Musk-like tycoon played by Edward Norton sends out as invitations at the start of the film. Despite this, the nearly two and a half hour length of the film flies by without padding or self-consciousness. It remains playful and spritely from beginning to end. 

The cast is broadly fun without being cartoonish. Even such limited performers as Kate Hudson and Dave Bautista are expertly cast and directed. The costumes by Jenny Eagan are fittingly fun and flamboyant, as is the film's soundtrack and production design. I appreciated the tributes to Ricky Jay and The Last of Sheila, both cult favorites whose Kool-Aid I have long savored. Rian Johnson showed he appreciated the classic format of the detective story in his first feature, Brick, Glass Onion shows he can still revel with delight in what in most hands is a hackneyed genre.