Wake Up Dead Man, review: the thrilling Knives Out saga finally lays its cards on the table

With Wake Up Dead Man, writer and director Rian Johnson can finally lay his cards on the table: the third Knives Out film confirms the true intentions and priorities of its creator, which are more ambitious, profound, and political than even those of his inspirations, starting with Agatha Christie. If the queen of mystery, Christmas after Christmas, for decades gave her readers a crime and an investigation to solve that allowed her to exercise a biting but rarely truly sharp irony on England, first classist and colonialist, then decadent and melancholic after the Second World War, Rian Johnson makes social irony something much more incisive, abrupt, and piercing. By the third case of investigator Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), it's impossible not to notice a thematic common thread that goes far beyond the murder.

Once again, we find ourselves in the United States, and more precisely in New York State. However, we are far from the big metropolis, because the fascination of Knives Out is all about counties, small towns, and, in this case, "old-style" parishes, where tradition and the oldest, most authentic American spirit should theoretically reside. As with the old manor in the first Knives Out and the tech palace in Glass Onion, Johnson instead insists on how much "old America" is a concept as constructed as it is artificial. The priest protagonist, played by Josh O'Connor, at one point looks disconsolately at the church entrusted to him, with its austere and oppressive neo-Gothic style, and states that "it has more in common with Disneyland than with Notre Dame." It is one of the most brilliant and cutting passages in a film that has a true vocation for denouncing the superficiality of American identity.

The first fiction of Knives Out, as always, lies in the very concept of the United States, presented as authentic only in their obsessive construction of a canon, of a staging that borders on pantomime, within a community where, once again, the only true law is that of money. Money, even in the parish, is the measure on which social hierarchy is built, an expression of a wicked, oppressive, punitive classism. Leading the parish and its faithful like a true despot is Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a man who interprets the Catholic faith as a weapon and himself as a soldier. Faith becomes a threat with which to bend the most prominent citizens of his community, gaining power and money.

Knives Out continues to tell the story of a United States governed by money, even at the foot of the altar

The point of view through which we explore this world, long before Daniel Craig makes his appearance, is that of an outsider rich only in spirit. Josh O'Connor plays Reverend Jud Duplenticy, a young Catholic priest with a past as a boxer, sent to support Wicks in his diaconate, who finds himself involved in a war of faith: a clash between two different ways of understanding the construction of a pastoral community and, finally, in a murder.

Once again, therefore, in the plot of Knives Out, money and American "family dynasties," here expressed in a particularly scandalous ecclesiastical form, correspond to a level of fiction and human decay that becomes the true object of Rian Johnson's investigation, while Benoit Blanc tries to get Reverend Jud out of trouble, whose redeeming quality is precisely that of being authentic and genuine, starting from his faith.

After the old money of the first film and the new money of tech and finance of the second, as if telling an ancient kingdom, Johnson focuses on spiritual power, choosing not by chance the Catholic confession, always perceived in the United States as the most decadent and scandalous. Wake Up Dead Man centers on this oppressive and at the same time fake church in its modernism, with a cross that isn't there: behind the altar remains only the shadow of a crucifix, a trace of a desecrating act of vandalism that represents the starting point of the complex case faced by Benoit.

By this third narrative piece, the portrait of the United States drawn by Johnson is truly dark and recalls certain corrupt and power-drunk dynasties of ancient times. Yet Knives Out remains one of the very few cinematic franchises capable of integrating, and at the same time ridiculing, absolutely contemporary obsessions and postures. Here, for example, a young non-Caucasian with political ambitions appears, embodying an absolute lack of ideas and ideals, except that of emerging by embracing the most extreme and visible point of view possible: the logic of influencers translated into politics.

Johnson, however, does not forget that it is also, and above all, about faith, that is, the most authentic interiority of those who believe or of those who, like him, define themselves as "proud unbelievers." There are beautiful passages in Wake Up Dead Man where Benoit, Jud, and the devout perpetual Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close) confront dissonant points of view on what God is and how one can find Him within a cruel and manipulative community like the one led by the monsignor.

The O'Connor-Craig investigative duo is a great gift from Johnson to the viewer

In this sense, Josh O'Connor's character is truly splendid, so good at carrying the film through personal tribulations and the clash with Wicks that the initial 40 minutes without Benoit fly by. On the one hand, because in his inner torment, linked to the past and the speciousness of the monsignor's faith, lies the film's most authentic reflection on the relationship with the divine; on the other hand, because O'Connor once again proves to be an exceptional performer, capable of giving depth and humanity to the character while remaining perfectly within the dark and brilliant confines of Johnson's social and investigative invective.

Johnson, if not in a state of grace, is certainly in excellent form, both as a director and, above all, as a screenwriter. Beyond the social commentary, Wake Up Dead Man is also and above all an intriguing mystery, which aims at one of the formats most loved by enthusiasts: the impossible crime in a locked room, here presented in a microscopic sacristy hidden behind a secret door on the church altar. The over two hours and twenty minutes of running time serve Johnson to re-read the film's events multiple times, layering the investigative narrative on different levels of complexity. The first is quite intuitive for a moderately attentive viewer, as it is for Jud, so much so that Benoit seems almost superfluous; but it is obviously only he, from his investigative pulpit, who manages to reassemble the entire and intricate puzzle.

Even Daniel Craig works much better here than in previous chapters. Benoit Blanc is such an over-the-top and sometimes caricatured character that he initially caused him some difficulty, while now the actor appears perfectly at ease and, with small touches, explores a deep and hitherto almost unexplored interiority. Seeing him act in a duet with O'Connor is an enormous pleasure, further amplified by the presence of Glenn Close. The actress, a veteran of the genre, plays a biting, prim, and unintentionally comical perpetual in her appearing behind the characters, who, however, gradually reveals herself to be a surprisingly solid character, handled with great professionalism.