Throwing a party for his 85th birthday, the world's bestselling mystery writer, Harlan Thrombey, spends the evening with his family at the writer’s Gothic Massachusetts estate, including his daughter Linda and her husband Richard, his son Walt and grandson Ransom. Near midnight he retires, being helped by his nurse / carer Marta Cabrera, who leaves as the party is winding down.

The next morning Harlan is found dead in his bedroom by housekeeper Fran, having slashed his own throat.

The family are gathered in the lavishly decorated living room by Detective Lt. Elliott and Trooper Wagner to be questioned, but also there is urbane private detective Benoit Blanc, who explains he was hired that morning by an anonymous client, and paid in cash, to investigate the incident, which is officially seems to be a suicide. As the Police and Blanc try different strategies, all of the family profess to be shocked and stunned, and cannot imagine why Harlan took his own life. Blanc finds that Marta has a unique physical reaction to lying, that she vomits when she tells an untruth, and when questioned about her actions the previous night Blanc rules her out as a suspect.

As Blanc and the officers note what could be clues, such as a broken piece of trellis under Harlan’s bedroom window, the truth about the party starts to emerge, that during the day and into the evening Harlan in turn challenged each of his children and in-laws. He cut daughter-in-law Joni, a ‘lifestyle guru’, out of his will after finding she took advantage of an accounting error over several years, being paid twice for her daughter Meg’s expensive education and pocketing the difference; he threatened to expose Richard’s extra-marital affair to Linda, and to withhold Ransom’s inheritance for his feckless, reprehensible lifestyle. The insecure Walt, who ran the family publishing business, dealing with his father’s publishing deals, found himself fired, Harlan insisting that he should find a job outside the family, Blanc realising that most of the Thrombeys have a motive for killing their patriarch, and while they all pride themselves as being ‘self-made entrepreneurs’, all were reliant on the old man’s money.

Putting the pieces together, Blanc becomes convinced that the man was murdered, and did not take his own life, but is unable to pin it on any particular suspect, until the the family lawyer, Alan Stevens, arrives for the reading of Harlan’s will, an event which turns everything upside-down….

A warm and affectionate pastiche / homage to the traditional Agatha Christie country house murder mystery, with some clever ideas of its own, a fine cast having a hell of a good time, and a very smart murder methodology, Knives Out, directed and co-written by Rian Johnson, is a witty if occasionally mind-bending joy, having fun with the tropes of the situation and genre while also respecting them, resulting in the sort of entertaining, smartly-scripted star vehicle one thought wasn’t being made any more. One feels the old girl herself would have approved.

The pic, co-written with frequent collaborator Ram Bergman, opens in absolutely traditional fashion, with housekeeper Fran (Edi Patterson) discovering the body of famous and hugely successful author Harlan Thrombly (Christopher Plummer), having seemingly committed suicide after a party on the night of his 85th birthday, and to which his pit of vipers of a family have all attended. The old man has apparently slashed his own throat, but the Police, in the form of Lt. Elliott (Lakeith Stansfield) and Trooper Wagner (Noah Segan), question the various members of the Thrombly clan, along with Fran, and Harlan’s nurse / carer Marta (Ana de Armas), but also at the manor is private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig sporting a deep-fried Southern accent and a natty line in suits), who has been hired by an unknown client, paid with an envelope of cash, to come to the manor and investigate, obviously by somebody who doesn’t believe the preliminary suicide verdict.

Like Quentin Tarantino with Once Upon A TIme In Hollywood and Bong Joon-Ho with Cannes winner Parasite, Johnson asked reviewers to retain the mystery of the twists and turns in the plot, and you won’t find any spoilers here, but as becomes clear, the film isn’t strictly a whodunnit of old. Like TV’s Columbo or Murder She Wrote, the identity of the murderer is revealed just before halfway in an extended flashback, and the rest of the pic becomes a case of will the killer be caught or will someone else be framed for the killing.

And the Thrombly family are quite a collection, from unhappy marrieds Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Richard (Don Johnson), to new-age guru Joni (Toni Collette) and her rebellious daughter Meg (Katherine Langford), and wayward sons Walt (Michael Shannon), running the old man’s business affairs, and playboy and wastrel Ransom (Chris Evans, a million miles away from the clean-cut Captain America). It comes as no surprise when someone notes that Harlan had a large family, but only one friend, Marta, and as each reveals they had a motive for killing the patriarch, the real nature of the various Thromblys are revealed, and a nasty lot they are. Although set in the present day, the film is classically styled and plotted, but Johnson, some would say bravely, brings very contemporary aspects to the characters, with several proving to be furiously Trumpian, a running joke being that each seems to think Marta is from a different South American country, and most reveal themselves to be frighteningly greedy and self-obsessed, turning on Marta simply because she is an immigrant, and the fact that her mother is undocumented quickly becomes a weapon in their hands.

But Johnson, apart from the whole murder thing, keeps the tone light, with the family happily firing insults left, right and centre, particularly Evans’ noxious Ransom, asking if Blanc works for ‘CSI: KFC’, and the cast are clearly relishing the zingy dialogue. Also interesting is how Johnson handles his cast, showing some interesting facets, such as Craig’s unexpected comic timing, and having Shannon, usually psychotically brooding on a rolling boil, in a very different role as the cowed, belittled son Walt, almost having to be physically forced by the other family members in joining their self-righteous indignation, Johnson also manages to steer Plummer, an actor who has indeed ripened in his later years, away from his excesses, instead giving a restrained and sympathetic performance rather than playing to the imaginary gallery. Cuban actress Ana de Armas, also seen in lower-profile roles in pics including the thriller Knock Knock and Blade Runner 2049, is a sympathetic central suspect, suddenly placed in a position she struggles to cope with, and interestingly after this she followed Craig into his 007 swansong, No Time To Die. Only the excellent Riki Lindhome seems short-changed, getting one or perhaps two lines in a role which seems to have been edited down.

Johnson and Bergman also provide an extremely smart method of murder, the plot being ingeniously complex but also logical and well explained, with the clues being fairly nestled in the script, with Marta’s inability to tell a lie, without unfortunate physical consequences, being a clever aside. There is also a deep, deep reference in a brief scene of Craig’s Blanc singing along to Losing My Mind, a song from Stephen Sondheim’s musical Follies, multi-award-winning Sondheim also being the co-writer of 1973’s The Last Of Shiela, another deliciously waspish and clever Christie homage.

A total delight, which zips through its’ 130 minute running time, one hopes for another outing for the amiable Blanc some time, along with the double act of Elliott and Wagner.