Directed by: Rian Johnson
Distributed by: Netflix
Written by Anna Harrison
80/100
It has been clear from the first of Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” whodunnits that Daniel Craig’s affable detective Benoit Blanc is the real draw; it is a delight to see Craig play so against type and listen to his ridiculous Southern drawl as he explains the who, the why, the when, the where, and most importantly, the how of it all. That’s why it is so shocking that Blanc all but disappears from “Wake Up Dead Man” (I refuse to add that unwieldy subtitle of “A Knives Out Mystery”) for its first forty-five minutes. Even more shocking is that I didn’t mind his absence.
In both “Knives Out” and “Glass Onion,” Blanc has been positioned as the detective come to save the day, if in a rather unserious manner at times and with some help in the form of Ana de Armas or Janelle Monáe, depending on which movie you’re watching. The rest of the characters all suffer from varying degrees of idiocy or intolerability, leaving Blanc as the clear moral superior who waltzes in, spouts some great one-liners, and departs, having revealed the characters around him but never changing much himself.
This changes in “Wake Up Dead Man” when Blanc meets Father Jud Duplencity (Josh O’Connor), a former boxer turned priest who has found himself at the center of a murder plot: Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), the leader of a rural church in upstate New York, has been found dead in the church’s storage closet, and Father Jud’s checkered past—and contentious relationship with the arrogant Wicks—has made him the prime suspect.
It is Jud whom “Wake Up Dead Man” revolves around, not Blanc. Through his eyes, we see Jud arrive at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude and immediately clash with Wicks, who sees Jud as a threat to his “flock” and makes the younger man listen to his confessions about all the different ways he masturbated that week. Wicks has cultivated a small but ardent following, consisting of Martha (Glenn Close) and her partner, Samson (Thomas Haden-Church); the town doctor, Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner); chronically ill cellist Simone (Cailee Spaeny); lawyer Vera (Kerry Washington) and her adopted son, Cy (Daryl McCormack); and failing novelist Lee (Andrew Scott). They, too, see Jud as a threat, and ardently refuse his advances to break bread.
And then Wicks drops dead, seemingly stabbed in the back by a phantom.
The actual mystery of Wicks’s death and its resolution are perhaps the weakest aspect of “Wake Up Dead Man,” and the final explanation is rather overlong and overwrought, hurt by the thinness of much of its supporting cast. But that hardly matters when watching O’Connor, whose command of the film and Jud himself is so strong that it nearly made me want to go to church again. For the first time, Blanc encounters someone who challenges him; while Blanc scoffs at church and religion, Jud forces him to recognize the good it can do.
Nowhere is that more clear than a phone call between Jud and a random construction company employee, Louise (Bridget Everett). As Blanc and even Jud himself become increasingly drawn into the more exciting aspects of a murder mystery—the theatrics, the hidden money (because there’s always hidden money)—the call is a stark reminder of the humans whose livelihoods and happiness are at stake. When Jud realizes he’s reverting to his old selfish self, he drops everything to comfort Louise, and the resulting scene is the best in the entire trilogy. Gone are Blanc’s glib remarks, gone are the gently liberal jokes about DOGE and cults of personality; we are left, instead, with plain goodness and kindness.
Even Blanc cannot help but be moved. As amusing as he may be, it’s not exactly interesting to watch three movies where the main character remains static and unchanging. At some point, he must encounter someone or something that makes him grow and step into the light (literally, with Steve Yedlin’s lovely cinematography), and Jud is that person, helped by O’Connor’s tremendous performance. And so, though Blanc may be absent for large swathes of “Wake Up Dead Man,” the movie proves more important to his character than the two that came before.
If Johnson grows with his character, then the next one might be just about perfect.
“Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” Trailer
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