I don’t know whether to call Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery a Christian film. It’s about Christianity, at any rate. We learn that Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) was raised in a deeply religious home, and that upbringing has made him vehemently opposed to all religions. The film does not end (or even middle) with him falling to his knees and finding God, but the murder case he takes on does make him reckon with the power of religious faith and give him a greater appreciation of what that can do. That does not make this a better murder mystery than the second Knives Out movie, but it does make it an interesting new direction for the series.
The victim is Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), the monsignor of a Catholic church in upstate New York whose small congregation has been shrinking because of his habit of publicly shaming unwed mothers, gays, and all other “harlot whores” who represent the secular modern world. The main suspect and Blanc’s client is Fr. Jud Duplanticy (Josh O’Connor), a young priest who was sent to rein Wicks in and instead was punched in the stomach for criticizing his leadership. What draws Blanc’s interest is the fact that the crime appears to be physically impossible — after giving his Good Friday sermon, Wicks had withdrawn to a small alcove out of the congregation’s view and was at least 50 feet away from any other person when he was stabbed to death.
Writer-director Rian Johnson has never expressed much interest in religion in his previous films, but here he devotes a great deal of attention to why Father Jud turned to God after spending his youth as a drug addict and professional boxer who once killed his opponent in the ring. I’m afraid this is where O’Connor’s performance lets the side down. The English actor projects the requisite gentleness of a man who stops to pray for a construction company clerk with a sick mother even when he’s under great duress. What he doesn’t have is the violence in this character that may be simmering underneath the surface instead of in his past. The first Knives Out created a protagonist whom we could root for, and O’Connor’s soft-pedaling of his character prevents this movie from reaching that level.
I’m also disappointed that in a congregation full of devout Catholics, only one person considers the idea that the dead priest might be resurrected on Easter Sunday after he’s sealed up in his family tomb. That one person is the church secretary (Glenn Close), whom everyone treats as a crazy old lady.
There is, as always, a gallery of colorful characters. Wicks’ loyalists include a faded science-fiction novelist (Andrew Scott) who’s clearly based on Orson Scott Card, an alcoholic doctor (Jeremy Renner), and a paralyzed former classical cellist (Cailee Spaeny). When the town lawyer (Kerry Washington) exposes a shameful secret from Wicks’ past, his followers proclaim their continued faith in the man one by one, which is followed by an even more venomous twist.
If the unwinding of the mystery is a bit too labored, Wake Up Dead Man gives us something new about the detective at its center and also cleverly uses the fact that more than one man in the story wears his hair Jesus-style like the monsignor. It also has some tasty stuff about the toxic intersection of politics, religion, and social media embodied by the lawyer’s son (Daryl McCormack), an aspiring MAGA influencer who films everything in his path. Against all of this, Father Jud’s determination to continue doing good for his parish displays itself throughout. All this means the movie should be playing at more theaters in Tarrant County than the Look Cinemas Bedford and the Premiere Cinema Burleson before it goes on Netflix in mid-December. Whatever format you see it in, it makes for another engaging read.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Starring Daniel Craig and Josh O’Connor. Written and directed by Rian Johnson. Rated R.
