We can’t stand it any longer! We’ve been keeping the ending of Knives Out a secret for weeks, but now that Rian Johnson’s new movie is in theaters, it’s finally time to reveal the killer. Don’t worry, we won’t drag it out like Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), but before we explain the ending, we have to warn you that there are major Knives Out spoilers ahead.
So consider yourself warned, as soon as you scroll past this photo of the movie’s impressive cast, you’re in danger of ruining the ending for yourself, assuming you haven’t seen Knives Out already. Ready to find out who killed Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer)? Let’s dive in.
A detective investigates the death of a patriarch of an eccentric, combative family. When renowned crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is found dead at his estate just after his 85th birthday, the inquisitive and debonair Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is mysteriously enlisted to investigate. “Knives Out” is essentially an energetic, showy take on a dusty Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, with interrogations. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes.
Ok, let’s get it out of the way. The killer in Knives Out is … Ransom Drysdale (Chris Evans), the spoiled adult grandson of Harlan Thrombey. Of course, the real joy of any whodunnit isn’t in who did it but how they did it. So let’s talk specifics.
Knives Out spoilers: The motive
Ransom’s reason for killing his grandfather is pretty straightforward. After mooching for years, he learns at his pappy’s 85th birthday party that Harlan’s changed his will to give the family fortune to his nurse, Marta (Ana de Armas).
Of course, Ransom’s not the only character in Knives Out with a motive. Almost everyone in the Thrombey family is living off Harlan’s money, and at his birthday party, the family patriarch puts them all on notice. He fires his son (Michael Shannon), who’s been running the publishing business that prints Harlan’s successful series of mystery books. He also cuts off his daughter-in-law (Toni Collette) and threatens to expose his son-in-law (Don Johnson) for cheating on his daughter (Jamie Lee Curtis).
But, at the end of the day, the only member of the Thrombey family actually capable of murder is Ransom, though the way he goes about it is particularly devious…
Knives Out spoilers: The plot
Ransom doesn’t kill his grandfather outright. Instead, he decides to pin the blame on Marta, switching the labels on two bottles of medicine in her bag so she’ll inject Harlan with a lethal dose of morphine by mistake. He also swipes the antidote so there’s no way to undo the damage once it’s been done. He’s also aware of a law that killing someone invalidates you from inheriting their money, which means the fortune would revert back to the family.
Sounds foolproof right? Unfortunately for Ransom, things quickly go wrong.
First, Marta accidentally gives Harlan the right medicine (with the wrong label on it) after they both fall on the floor and get switched. After reading the label, she assumes she accidentally killed him and explains that he has minutes to live. Thinking quickly, Harlan uses his last moments of life to hatch an alibi for Marta and then cuts his own throat so the entire thing looks like a suicide.
Things hit a boiling point once the family learns that Harlan left everything to Marta. She ends up fleeing with Ransom, of all people, who pretends to help her while subtly pushing her towards confessing. (One moment where he emails Marta from an anonymous account and then casually asks if she’s checked her email is particularly blatant.)
Marta falls for it and confesses, but everything works out when Detective Blanc retrieves Harlan’s toxicology report and deduces that Ransom switched the labels. It’s a bittersweet ending, though, as Marta realizes that Harlan wasn’t actually poisoned and would have been just fine if she just called for an ambulance.
But, hey, at least Ransom gets arrested and Marta ends up with all the money. In a movie full of deplorable, rich white people, she’s the only one who deserves a happy ending.
Knives Out is in theaters now.
Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” unravels not just a good old-fashioned murder mystery but the very fabric of the whodunit, pulling at loose threads until it has intricately, devilishly woven together something new and exceedingly delightful.
For all the detective tales that dot television screens, the Agatha Christie-styled whodunit has gone curiously absent from movie theaters. The nostalgia-driven “Murder on Orient Express” (2017), popular as it was, didn’t do much to dispel the idea that the genre has essentially moved into retirement, content to sit out its days in a warm puffy armchair, occasionally dusting itself off for a remake.
But Johnson has since his 2005 neo-noir debut “Brick” shown a rare cunning for enlivening old genres with densely plotted deconstruction. He makes very clever movies (“Looper,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”) that sometimes, like in the madcap caper “The Brothers Bloom,” verge on showy overelaboration, of being too much.
Don Johnson Movie Knives Out
But in the whodunit, too much is usually a good thing. Give us all the movie stars, plot twists and murder weapons you can find. When done well, there is almost nothing better. And “Knives Out,” while it takes a little while to find its stride, sticks the landing, right up to its doozy of a last shot. The whodunit turns out not only to still have a few moves left but to be downright acrobatic.
The film begins like many before it: with a dead body that needs accounting for. Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), a bestselling mystery writer, is found with his throat cut in a small upstairs room in his sprawling Victorian mansion. Production designer David Crank deserves much credit for the film’s fabulously ornate and much-paneled setting — a Clue board come to life and a home that could rival the modernist abode of “Parasite” for movie house of the year.
Thrombey is extremely wealthy with an expansive family of spoon-fed, entitled eccentrics that would likely mix well with the dynasty of HBO’s “Succession.” And as much intrigue as there is about Harlan’s death, for his children there’s even more about his inheritance. There’s his relator daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her cheating husband Richard (Don Johnson), a vocal Trump supporter; his son Walt (a sweater-wearing Michael Shannon) who runs his father’s publishing house; lifestyle guru daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette); and his playboy grandson Ransom (Chris Evans), the black sheep of the family.
There are others, too, most notably Harlan’s trusted caregiver Marta (Ana de Armas). The Thrombeys casually refer to her as “the help” and, in a running gag, are all over the map when it comes to her native South American country. A deeper political dimension slowly takes shape as the family’s cavalier indifference to Marta plays a role in the movie’s unspooling mysteries. Juggling themes of class privilege, immigration and ethnocentricity, “Knives Out” is a whodunit for the Trump era.
Some mysteries first submerge themselves in set-up, the crime in question and the entrance of its central detective. Johnson is too restless for such an approach. He favors flashbacks, by the boat load, to go along with elaborate plot mechanics of reversals and perspective switcheroos. That gives “Knives Out” a somewhat clunky and imperfectly paced first act, something Johnson makes up for with the payoff of his finale. But for a movie with so many fine actors having so much fun, we get surprisingly little of the Thrombeys as a whole.
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Instead, our detective calls almost immediately. Enter Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a flamboyant Louisiana investigator of such renown that he’s already been profiled in the New Yorker as “the last of the gentleman sleuths.” Even with such immaculate set dressing all around him (the mystery writer’s house is decorated throughout with murder weapons, including a throne of knives), Craig still manages to chew plenty of scenery with his heavily accented Southern-style Poirot. One calls him “Foghorn Leghorn,” another “CSI: KFC.” He’s accompanied by another detective (an underused Lakeith Stanfield) but he quickly makes Marta his sidekick; she has a useful aversion to lies, throwing up every time she tells one.
There isn’t much that isn’t knowing in Johnson’s dialogue. He delights in playing by the genre’s rules and remaking them at once. There are winking references here to “Hamilton” and “Baby Driver,” and “Knives Out” more than once risks being overwhelmed by self-satisfaction.
But “Knives Out,” in the end, believes earnestly in the whodunit, it just wants to turn it inside out. To say more about that would spoil the fun. But keep an eye here, and elsewhere, on de Armas. The “Blade Runner 2049” actress (soon to be seen in the next James Bond film, also with Craig) isn’t the biggest star in a film awash with A-listers. But with neither cloak nor dagger, she seizes “Knives Out.” It’s hers.
“Knives Out,” a Lionsgate release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for thematic content, some disturbing images and strong language. Running time: 126 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
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MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
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Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP