Lionsgate | Release Date: November 27, 2019 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
47
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
An entertainment that’s as smart, witty, stylish and exhilarating as any movie lover could wish for. It’s tempting to call it the sort of movie they don’t make any more, but they didn’t make all that many way back when, because it’s really hard to pull off a production of such startling quality. If there’s a false note from start to finish I must have been laughing or gasping when it sounded.
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The TelegraphOct 8, 2019
Beyond its waspish wit, a dastardly roll-call of suspects and Daniel Craig’s dapper efforts as our presiding sleuth, the film gives nothing away until the bitter end, thanks to a head-spinning tricksiness of plotting that even Agatha Christie might have conceded was rather ingenious.
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The PlaylistSep 8, 2019
The genre maestro has his audience in good hands, “good” in this instance meaning both “skilled, capable, expert” and “decent, ethically sound.” He’s assembled a dazzling contraption that, if twisted in just the right way, pops open to reveal a nugget of wisdom crystallized by the cathartic final shot: we only really own what we earn.
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RogerEbert.comSep 9, 2019
Rian Johnson’s Knives Out is one of the most purely entertaining films in years. It is the work of a cinematic magician, one who keeps you so focused on what the left hand is doing that you miss the right. And, in this case, it’s not just a wildly fun mystery to unravel but a scathing bit of social commentary about where America is in 2019.
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Even if Knives Out loses a micro-dose of its claustrophobia and tension in the second act, it’s in the name of undoing what we’ve come to expect of past whodunnit stories. It’s all part of what makes the film such an effective, entertaining, and contemporary spin on what’s no longer a worn-out genre.
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For 130 minutes, the writer-director disorients and delights, confidently trailblazing through his murder mystery two, maybe even three steps ahead of the audience. This isn’t a simple, direct testament to the slick, sidesplitting script, nor the fully committed, second-to-none ensemble, but rather a passed inspection of these cogs and their ability to form a purely entertaining experience.
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Knives Out recalls a time when audiences could still be surprised by such mysteries, before the genre devolved into a corny parody of itself. Johnson keeps us guessing, which is good, but the thing that makes this a better mousetrap than most isn’t the complexity, but the fact he’s managed to rig it without the usual cheese.
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The GuardianSep 7, 2019
A contemporary whodunnit that both respects and revises the subgenre. ... It’s such a rare pleasure to see a director so in love with a genre without slipping into Tarantinoesque fanboy indulgence, remembering his audience is bigger than himself and also that his film requires both head and heart.
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The movie’s wit and energy hold your interest, but they don’t spark the pleasure of the unexpected, the thrill you felt in "Laura," "The Last of Sheila," "Chinatown," "The Sixth Sense," or the 1974 adaptation of Christie’s "Murder on the Orient Express" (not Kenneth Branagh’s inept remake), movies whose big reveals surprise you in their elegant simplicity.
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