MOVIE REVIEW – In the sequel to Rian Johnson’s whodunnit detective thriller, Daniel Craig returns as the aristocratic detective Benoit Blanc to solve a murder mystery. The story, which starts off extravagantly and intriguingly, settles down quickly enough. Apart from a few Agatha Christie clichés and a few twists and turns, it’s a fairly predictable crime story. At the same time, the overly trendy humor and the raunchy performances drag the film down.

Rian Johnson’s sly, stylish 2019 crime thriller, Trapped, was greeted with a frenetic enthusiasm that not only launched a franchise, but also helped to reignite a genre that had been mostly dormant for decades. After the flat, but all the more obviously commercial remake of Murder on the Orient Express, this more original and sarcastic film was a big hit, and it became clearer that viewers would still want to play detective stories even if Agatha Christie, a classic expert in the genre, did not tell them.

Benoit Blanc returns

The same detective: Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), but a different setting in a sequel that, while already a franchise, still offers Johnson unlimited possibilities, a liberating sense of creative freedom after the shackles of the Star Wars universe. In the mildly absurdly titled sequel, The Glass Bulb, Daniel Craig’s eccentric detective Benoit Blanc travels to a private island where he is confronted with new suspects and a murder that Johnson himself has insisted critics keep quiet about.

Unlike in the original film, it would be a spoiler to even mention whose death is being investigated, so even less of the more twisty plot can be revealed. All we can share is that it’s the story of a flamboyant tech mogul, who bears a strong resemblance to Elon Musk, played by Edward Norton, who invites a group of old friends, including Kate Hudson, Janelle Monae, Leslie Odom Jr, Kathryn Hahn and Dave Bautista, to his luxury mansion for the weekend to take part in a murder mystery.

Glitzier, more extravagant visuals, but a hollow story and lots of razzle-dazzle

As usual with sequels, Johnson has gone the extra mile and spent a sizeable chunk of the $469 million Netflix paid for the rights to the sequel on a spectacular hi-tech location. But while the visuals may have been more glamorous (the original film’s somewhat bleak aesthetic was one of its few weak points), the script became much less original. Caught in a Trap was built on an early twist that subverted the whole film and turned our expectations of whodunnit on its head, so we storm into the sequel with the knowledge that a simple by-the-numbers murder mystery won’t do. The opening sequence is so densely packed with everything from pop culture references to inside jokes to easter eggs, giggles and surprise cameos that the entertainment turns tiresome a little too quickly and the script sacrifices too much at the altar of jokey trendiness.

Famous stars and celebrities seep into the film through drinks, food or other concepts (there’s Jared Leto’s kombucha, Jeremy Renner’s hot sauce and Serena Williams’ exercise classes) and while some of the quips work, a lot of them are pretty tiresome. There is also a particular emphasis on COVID, or the mask worn for COVID, and somehow this also makes the film feel tiresomely dated, reminding you, dear viewer, that you are now watching a film shot in 2020, and this distractingly detaches you from the plot, which is twisty in places but somehow not overly steely.

Ripping at the top

While Daniel Craig’s performance is entertaining overall, everyone else somehow comes to mind as over-the-top ribbing of the elite. Edward Norton is sweaty as the tech billionaire who is strikingly reminiscent of Elon Musk, who thinks he is too smart and eccentric but in fact gives the impression of an irritating nouveau riche bouffon. But the same can be said of most of the other characters. Almost all of the characters remain annoyingly superficial and their acting repertoire (obviously at the director’s behest) is limited to their buffoonery, and we don’t learn much about most of the characters despite the relatively long running time.

And as for the murder mystery, it’s dew-shy, even the weakest Agatha Christie novel is light years above the rest. Without spoilers, it’s pretty obvious who the culprit is and he’s quickly revealed, and the final scene, intended to be “epic”, is annoyingly silly, full of forced woke and PC elements.

So, Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion is a bit like what we say about the real onion: we try to reveal more and more layers, but to no avail: weighed down by the weight of underdeveloped characters, a “trendy” but still weak story and a bunch of rip-roaring performances, the film is a much weaker work than its great predecessor, Knives Out.

-BadSector-