It was not much of a weekend for new movies this past weekend. A sequel to a horror movie based on a video game or a James L. Brooks comedy that was probably not my thing. But wait, what’s this? A new Knives Out? That’s the sort of thing I would like. Sure, I would rather have watched it in theaters like I did the other two, but that wasn’t an option for me this time around. Anyway, now it’s here, and I have the time to watch it. With some luck, it’ll be on par with the others.
But that title sure is unwieldy.
Young priest Father Jud (Josh O’Connor) is a former boxer who once killed a man in the ring and, after an incident involving a deacon, is sent to be the new priest for a more rural parish run by Msgr. Wicks (Josh Brolin). Wicks is used to running that particular church his own way, and he doesn’t like having what is essentially a back-up. As such, when he turns up dead in what feels like an impossible situation with a knife in his back, the most likely suspect is Father Jud since the younger priest was almost at the end of his tether by that point after weeks of embarrassing confessions from Wicks designed to be psychological abuse, to say nothing of what Wicks was like with his devoted congregation, a small, exclusive club of fairly well-off people as Wicks had a habit of scaring away potential newcomers.
As it is, any one of these people could have a cause to want Wicks dead. Is it the church’s longtime attorney, Vera (Kerry Washington), who is raising an adopted son (Daryl McCormack), himself an aspiring politician, both a job and a child that were pressed upon her by her own father? Is it Dr. Nat (Jeremy Renner), still missing the wife who left him? Maybe it’s best-selling author Lee (Andrew Scott) whose fan base changed when his right-wing politics started to infuse his writing. And there’s always Martha (Glenn Close), Wicks’s assistant and a hardline true believer herself. It’s a big jumble of a mess. Might as well call in Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) to solve the case.
As with the other Knives Out movies, there are a few things to expect: a general look like it’s an Agatha Christie story with upper class people involved in a crime against a member of wealthy and/or privilege while inserting the sort of social commentary that Christie would have never used, in this case, criticism aimed at organized religion and some of the politics associated with it. Father Jud is a good man, and though Blanc has no taste for religion, the movie never presents Jud as anything less than a sincere man trying to bring others to Jesus. Blanc may aim his criticisms towards the Catholic Church himself, but most of the movie’s subtext is about how some people use religion as an excuse to do other things, and Wicks is certainly not much of a man of God. In the meantime, there’s still a rather clever mystery at foot, a better one than the one in Glass Onion even if the resolution was probably funnier. Wake Up, Dead Man is hardly devoid of humor, but it also seems to be taking itself a bit more seriously.
That added seriousness doesn’t take away from the overall movie, but at the same time, I don’t think it was quite on par with the others. Maybe it was the added seriousness, but I think it might have been more the length. These movies have been used to make political commentary in the past, but maybe it was because the Church itself is painted a benevolent while Wicks was up to things that no parish priest within the Church should have been able to get away with. I can’t quite put my finger on it, so while I recommend the new Knives Out, especially for fans of the other two movies, I don’t know that it was quite on the same level as those two. Make of that what you will.
Grade: B+
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