I normally love spoilers, but I've had a suspense movie ruined for me in the past because I accidentally caught the last few minutes and I wasn't going to have another one go down the tubes, so I carefully avoided spoilers. I will not give away any spoilers here!
The movie is about a millionaire crime novelist who dies after his birthday party. The police are ready to rule it a suicide, but a mysterious detective shows up to investigate. There is plenty of family members with a motive to kill the old man and plenty for the detective to investigate.
The movie stars Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit and Ana de Armas as Marta Cabrera, the old man's nurse. The family members include Jamie Leigh Curtis, Don Johnson, Chris Evans, Michael Shannon and others.
I knew going in that there was a big plot twist at the end, so I spent a lot of the movie guessing at what it would be. I thought I knew, but I was wrong. I'm rarely wrong, so that was a win for the movie, although the actual plot twist was a bit anticlimactic compared to my guess. :-)
I'm a very harsh critic of movies and television shows because I'm always picking apart the writing. Occupational hazard, I guess. Knives Out kept me entertained throughout and I was willing to forgive a couple of convenient moments that happened in the plot. Daniel Craig's detective started out slightly irritating to me, but as the movie progressed, I grew to like him and Nurse Marta as his sidekick was a very likeable heroine.
The structure of the movie is a bit unconventional with the current-time story interspersed with flashbacks from various characters of their last conversation with the deceased crime writer. (Among other scenes.) This could have been distracting or confusing, but I thought it was handled very well.
I would have liked the plot twist to be a little more twisty than what I got, but it was a twist and I really didn't guess what was going on until right before it was revealed.
Bottom line: I recommend the movie, but probably wouldn't pay full price to see it. One thumb up (instead of two).
