'Knives Out': Daniel Craig Discovers Whodunit to Christopher Plummer

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 2 hours 10 minutes

AARP Membership— $12 for your first year when you sign up for Automatic Renewal

Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine.

Join Now

Stars: Toni Collette, Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ana de Armas, Chris Evans, Don Johnson, Christopher Plummer, Michael Shannon

Director: Rian Johnson

Did you like Murder on the Orient Express? You'll love Knives Out, a gust of fresh air in the dusty old “We're gathered at the Thrombey mansion after a murder — and one of you is a killer” genre. It also shares some DNA with the dynastic mooching-relatives TV hit Succession, because the entire Thrombey clan is not only wondering who slit the throat of their fabulously successful crime-novelist patriarch, Harlan (Christopher Plummer, 89), they're also frantic to learn how his will divvies up his fortune. It's too absorbingly suspenseful to be just a comedy, but it's witty — there's even a good joke based on the entirely sound idea that AARP is a good place to report elder abuse.

Plummer looks like he's having the time of his life, but not as much fun as Daniel Craig, 51, as Louisiana's Benoît Blanc — somebody tells him, “I read a tweet about a New Yorker article about you,” which called him “the last of the gentleman sleuths.” He insists — politely — that no one has a license to kill. Free from the bonds of playing Bond, Craig exults in Southern-fried lines like, “Mah presence will be ornamental ... a respectful, quiet observer of the truth.” His speech is as delectably slow as blackstrap molasses oozing into an old-fashioned. But he can't tell the jittery assembled clan who hired him to find the killer — someone unknown sent him an envelope stuffed with cash.

And so, in a place the Addams Family might find too gothic — the living room's giant knife sculpture looks like the Game of Thrones throne, and family portraits conceal secret escape windows — the hunt for the killer(s) is on. Could it be Harlan's thwarted son (Michael Shannon, 45), who can't get Harlan to permit lucrative movie options on his books? His icy, snooty daughter (Jamie Lee Curtis, 61) or her ghastly, boorish husband (Don Johnson, 69)? The slightly Gwyneth Paltrow-ish entrepreneur of New Age nonsense (Toni Collette, 47), Harlan's widowed daughter-in-law, who stole $400,000 from him? His crazy extremist online troll grandson (Jaeden Martell)? The Beamer-racing black sheep of the family (Chris Evans, thrilled to play a worse person than Captain America)?