Daniel Craig returns as Benoit Blanc in Glass Onion (Picture: PA)
‘Are you guys ready to have some fun?’ yelled Knives Out creator Rian Johnson as he introduced the London Film Festival premiere of his follow-up.
Hell, yeah!
And boy, did Johnson deliver. His Glass Onion is the year’s most ingeniously entertaining movie.
An ‘equal not a sequel’ to 2019’s Knives Out – the hit that effectively blew the dust off the whole all-star whodunnit genre – it marks the return of ‘the world’s greatest detective’, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig).
This time Blanc joins a murder mystery party on the private Greek island of a tech billionaire, Miles Bron (Edward Norton). Blanc’s fellow guests are all old friends and what Bron dubs ‘disruptors’.
There’s a cancelled ex-model (Kate Hudson – sensational) and her eye-rolling PA (Jessica Henwick); a men’s rights Twitch star (Dave Bautista) and his arm candy (Madelyn Cline); Bron’s beleaguered science guy (Leslie Odom Jr); an ambitious politician (Kathryn Hahn); and, putting a cat amongst the pigeons, Bron’s grudge-holding ex (Janelle Monae).
All of them, as Blanc points out, have strong motives to stick the knife in.
A superior puzzle box to its predecessor and played more heavily for laughs, in addition to providing sharp social commentary, Glass Onion’s 140 minutes merrily zip along.
Kathryn Hahn (left) and Kate Hudson (right) star in the ‘equal not a sequel’ to Knives Out (Picture: John Wilson/Netflix)
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Daniel Craig clearly enjoys camping it up as the erratically Southern-accented Blanc, whose outrageous poolside outfit tips a wink to both Roger Moore’s 007 and Peter Ustinov’s Poirot.
Elsewhere, compensating for this film’s slightly lower star-wattage are a few too many quickly dateable pop culture gags and a flurry of hilarious celeb cameos – including (we can’t resist telling you this one) Angela Lansbury, Zooming in for her final screen appearance as she trounces Craig at online game Among Us.
We won’t spoil the many twists. But let’s just say that I’ll hugely enjoy unpeeling Glass Onion a second or even a third time when I tuck into it again on Netflix over Christmas.
Glass Onion: a Knives Out Mystery is in cinemas nationwide from November 23 and on Netflix December 23
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It’s a sharp and funny ‘equal not a sequel’ to Knives Out.
