Detective Benoit Blanc sifts through a series of suspects when a monsignor turns up dead.
Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Josh O'Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, Thomas Haden Church.
Release Date: November 26, 2025
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Rated PG-13 for violent content, bloody images, strong language, some crude sexual material, and smoking.
Runtime: 2h 24m
Review:
The third entry in the Knives Out series, Wake Up Dead Man, is a slightly darker mystery that has some headier concepts on its mind than the first two films still sporting its wry scripting and big characters led by Josh O’Connor and Daniel Craig. Rian Johnson borrows plenty of inspiration from classic Edgar Allan Poe and Agatha Christie locked room mystery among others as his launching pad. He takes a slightly different approach in the first half by using Josh O'Connor’s Rev. Jud Duplenticy as his primary point of view before bringing Craig’s Benoit Blanc into the fold. It’s a bold move to keep the main character of the series offscreen for nearly an hour in order to let O’Connor establish the character and introduce the cast of characters at play. Thankfully, O’Connor is thoroughly engaging as the pragmatic, well-meaning boxer turned priest who serves as the linchpin of the story. His emotional baggage that led him to the priesthood adds layers of complexity to his role which makes the character’s story arch all the more interesting by the time it’s all said and done. The supporting players led by Glenn Close, Josh Brolin and Jeremy Renner are all clearly having a blast with the outsized characters they are playing. Close and Brolin both chew up every bit of scenery they get with impressive enthusiasm with the latter looking like a cult leader version of Kris Kristofferson on more than a few occasions. Renner plays against type here as a nebbish loser, drinking his life away after his wife left him, becoming more and more bitter as the days go along. Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny and Daryl McCormack round out the primary cast, but their characters are noticeably underwritten as caricatures more than three-dimensional people. They serve more as types of people that fall under the spell of Brolin’s charismatic extremist Monsignor Wicks. Those relationships offer up a variety of tantalizing tidbits of thematic morsels that you’ll be left chewing on long after the film’s runtime comes to end. The concepts of faith, storytelling and fanaticism are thrown about as the central mystery unfurls onscreen with Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc getting a hell of an introductory monologue once he appears onscreen. Craig is given more to work with here as Blanc isn’t as self-confident and sure of himself as we’ve seen in previous entries. It allows Johnson and Craig plenty of fertile ground to explore with Blanc and what makes his tick. Wake Up Dead Man is a thoroughly fascinating direction to take the character although there are more than a few spots where some trimming down would have made for a fluid, effective experience.
B+
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