Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery Review

Rian Johnson wrote the second Benoit Blanc film during lockdown and set it on a Greek island because he wanted to travel when nobody could, and Netflix paid $469 million in 2021 for it and one more sequel. The money is on screen: Spetses in hard summer light, and an ensemble of hangers-on. Edward Norton's Miles Bron keeps a governor (Kathryn Hahn), a scientist (Leslie Odom Jr.), a former supermodel (Kate Hudson) and a streamer (Dave Bautista) in his debt, and Janelle Monáe arrives as the partner he pushed out.

The best idea is structural. Partway through, Johnson rewinds the weekend and replays it from another angle, so that scenes already watched turn out to mean something else; Peter Bradshaw called it a showstopper of a flashback, and it is. The puzzle underneath is thinner than the first film's, deliberately so, which is clever and a little deflating. Monáe carries the second half, and Norton plays Bron as a man who mistakes vocabulary for intelligence.

Netflix gave it a one-week run in about 600 theaters over Thanksgiving 2022, the first Netflix film to play all three major American chains, and it earned an Oscar nomination for adapted screenplay. The first film is the better mystery; this is the funnier party.