SPOILERS ALERT!!!
Hello everyone! 🙂
Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’s blog and I’m Tim Bradley.
Rian Johnson is a film director I didn’t expect to return to again so soon. 😀 Since I checked out and reviewed ‘Knives Out’ in 2021, it’s only fair that I check out and review the sequel to the 2019 film called ‘Glass Onion’. The film stars Daniel Craig back in his role of the master detective Benoit Blanc.
‘Knives Out’ is a film that I quite enjoyed, especially upon a second viewing on Netflix recently. There are issues I have regarding the film in terms of the swearing and the central character puking when lying instead of telling the truth, but the film itself is decent enough and Rian Johnson directs it well.
I know that is a surprise to some people, considering he wrote and directed the ‘Star Wars’ film ‘The Last Jedi’, but when Rian Johnson is doing his own work outside an established franchise, he can deliver the goods. I hoped to see a sequel to ‘Knives Out’ after watching it on Amazon Prime Video. 🙂
Fortunately, over the Christmas holiday of 2022, I was able to see ‘Glass Onion’ on Netflix. As I understand it, the film had a one-week limited theatrical release before it went straight to streaming on Netflix on the 23rd of December. I’m just happy I’ve seen it at all, even if it wasn’t at the cinema.
‘Glass Onion’ has been an enjoyable sequel to ‘Knives Out’. I can’t say it’s better than the first film. Even my parents didn’t enjoy ‘Glass Onion’ in the same way they enjoyed ‘Knives Out’. My Dad told me that ‘Glass Onion’ wasn’t as captivating as ‘Knives Out’, which was intriguingly fascinating to hear.
The highlight of both ‘Knives Out’ and ‘Glass Onion’ is of course Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc. I’ve enjoyed him in these films so far. In fact, I find I enjoy Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc more than I enjoy him as James Bond (his latest Bond film was in ‘No Time To Die’, and that of course was his last one).
‘Glass Onion’ has Beniot Blanc take on a new case where a tech billionaire invites his old friends to his island where they’re about to play a murder mystery game. The film has echoes of Agatha Christie stories like ‘Death on the Nile’ and ‘And Then There Were None’ with a modern-day setting.
Speaking of which, the story takes place in May 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Yeah, that’s really bizarre, considering the film could have not taken place during that year, as it’s a year most of us would like to put behind us. As Doc Emmett Brown from ‘Back to the Future’ would say to Marty…
As well as Daniel Craig, the film features a star-studied cast in a similar style to ‘Knives Out’. There’s Edward Norton, who played Bruce Banner/the Hulk in ‘The Incredible Hulk’ before Mark Ruffalo took over from him in the ‘MCU’, as Miles Bron, a New York billionaire involved with large tech. 🙂
There’s also Janelle Monáe as Helen Brand as well as her twin sister Andi. There’s also Kathryn Hahn, who played Olivia Octavius/Doc Ock in ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ and Agatha Harkness in ‘WandaVision’, as Claire Debella, the governor of Connecticut running for the United States Senator.
There’s Leslie Odom Jr. as Lionel Toussaint and Kate Hudson as Birdie Jay. Dave Bautista, who is well-known for playing Drax of the Guardians of the Galaxy in the ‘MCU’, plays Duke Cody, who is a video game streamer and a men’s rights activist on Twitch and YouTube. He gets killed first, incidentally. 😮
Jessica Henwick plays Peg, Birdie’s assistant, and Madelyn Cline plays Whiskey (yes, I know 😀 ), who is Duke’s girlfriend and Twitch channel assistant. There’s also Noah Segan as Derol, a slacker that lives on Miles’ island, Jackie Hoffman as Ma, Duke’s mother (who doesn’t go to the island) and Dallas Roberts as Devon, Claire Debella’s husband (who also doesn’t go to the island with Claire). Interesting. 😀
The film does include a guest cameo of Hugh Grant, who plays Phillip, Benoit Blanc’s domestic partner. I found Hugh Grant having a waste of cameo in ‘Glass Onion’. Quite honestly, his appearance in the ‘Doctor Who’ spoof ‘The Curse of Fatal Death’ was longer than his appearance in ‘Glass Onion’ itself.
Ethan Hawke (who was in ‘Moon Knight’) briefly appears as Miles Bron’s assistant in the film (also called ‘Efficient Man’ 😀 ). Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who was in ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ and recently in the Disney/Robert Zemeckis ‘Pinocchio’ film), voices Miles’ clock, which is the Hourly Dong. 😐 Another wasted cameo. 😀
Apparently, Angela Lansbury made a cameo in this film, as she appeared as one of Benoit Blanc’s friends in the Zoom call meeting he had whilst bathing in his bath. The film is dedicated to her as well as to Stephen Sondheim (who was also in the Zoom call). Both had passed away before this film’s release.
By the way, the Mona Lisa painting makes an appearance in ‘Glass Onion’, which I found very amusing. I’m pretty sure it’s one of the fake Mona Lisas from the ‘Doctor Who’ story ‘City of Death’, especially when it gets burned up by the film’s end. I’m sure there’s still a Mona Lisa in the Louvre. 😀
‘Glass Onion’ has been an enjoyable sequel to ‘Knives Out’. I can’t say it’s better than ‘Knives Out’, but I still enjoyed the murder mystery Rian Johnson delivers in this film. It’s also interesting how the film diverts us to flashback sequences, revealing what happened when Benoit Blanc solved the case.
Thanks for reading!
Bye for now!
Tim 🙂
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