Daniel Craig’s suave sleuth returns

“A textbook example of an impossibly perfect crime,” marvels Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, as he considers the death of a preacher, in this third and largely enjoyable Knives Out movie. The curtain-raiser for this year’s London Film Festival, it again shows that nothing is impossible for Blanc, the southern gentleman sleuth with a preternatural gift for unpicking even the most head-scratching of mysteries. You know he’ll save the day and solve the crime, even if that crime comes loaded with more mis-directions than Google Maps.

The setting for Wake Up Dead Man – a nod to the U2 song, apparently – is Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, a church in the quaint town of Chimney Rock run by Josh Brolin’s singular clergyman Monsignor Jefferson Wicks. Joining him is Father Jud (Josh O’Connor), a temperamental ex-boxer who has been reassigned to Wicks’ church after an altercation with another priest. Soon enough, he’s hearing Wicks’ confessions including masturbatory fantasies about Japanese cat cafes – one of the film’s funniest sequences.

Unfortunately, Father Jud takes issue with the way Wicks runs the church – with a congregation that includes a town doctor (Jeremy Renner), an ailing cellist (Cailee Spaeny), a put-upon lawyer (Kerry Washington) and an author of sci-fi/mystery books (Andrew Scott). Most of them are present when Wicks dies on Good Friday of all days – a Devil-branded knife stabbed in his back, seconds after he ducks from view and collapses in an alcove.

Kerry Washington and Glenn Close in ‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’. CREDIT: Netflix

With no possible other exit from the alcove, suspicion falls on Jud, who discovers the body – not least because he’d been filmed yelling “You’re poisoning this church” to Wicks by the unctuous YouTuber Cy (Daryl McCormack). But Craig’s detective sees the bigger picture – in a story where hidden fortunes, greedy heirs and Jesus-like resurrections all come into play.

Writer-director Rian Johnson’s script isn’t quite the perfect box of tricks. It’s fairly tenuous that Blanc would turn up for this puzzler – apparently at the behest of Mila Kunis’ local cop. But it’s hard to punch down on a movie with such a riotously entertaining cast – one that also includes Jeffrey Wright as a ball-busting bishop, Thomas Haden Church as a faithful groundskeeper and Glenn Close as Wicks’ right-hand woman.

Johnson makes his literary influences clear – with nods to Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and other so-called ‘locked door’ mysteries. Certainly, Johnson is a good student of Christie, the queen of the whodunnit, and his script revels in a grisly sleight-of-hand almost as much it enjoys prodding the Catholic Church.

While it’s a little over-elaborate – at 140 minutes, you might well call it ‘The Long Good Friday’ – it’s impossible not to be amused by Craig doing a Scooby Doo impression (no, really) or Scott’s author beset by fans who all look like John Goodman in The Big Lebowski. With Josh O’Connor also absolutely terrific as the punch-drunk priest, Johnson’s mystery movie will be a perfect fireside companion when it hits Netflix in early December. Guaranteed, you won’t find a more fiendish film this winter.

Details

• Director: Rian Johnson
• Starring: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Mila Kunis
• Release date: November 26 (select cinemas), December 12 (Netflix)

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