Thank you die hard Star Wars fans. Your hatred of The Last Jedi drove Rian Johnson out of that franchise…right into Benoit Blanc’s arms. Wake Up Dead Man is another win for Johnson, taking the detective caper franchise into new areas, broadening the scope of what type of story can be told. I beg you to repent your sins; Wake Up Dead Man shows Johnson might have a merciful heart and open arms for you.
That’s because we head to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, a small parish in upstate New York for some confessions. The dead man in this case is Monsignor Wicks (Josh Brolin), a firebrand type preacher in the small town, a bit high on his own supply. Reverend Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) is sent to the parish to help bring a bit of humility and service back into the church, but times are tough. Wicks’s loyal followers – church lady Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), Dr. Nathaniel Sharp (Jeremy Renner), lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington) and her brother Cy (Daryl McCormack), author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), disabled cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny), and groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church) – are distrusting of the newcomer despite his best intentions. It all comes to a head when Wicks falls dead during a service, with local police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) has no choice but to bring in Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) to figure out who murdered a man who by all appearances was never touched.
The first 2 Knives Out movies were actively targeting entitled rich people, and bringing them down a peg. Wake Up Dead Man’s target as you might have guessed is religion. Specifically, the constant battle for the power inside of it. I love Benoit Blanc, but he rightly takes a backseat in this one to Reverend Jud. Josh O’Conner magnificently inhabits the fight for the soul for religion as we dig deeper and deeper into the case. Any religious person would love to have a reverend like Jud in their life: a man who knows he’s a sinner, but turns that pain into service, to help others cope with and overcome their own shortcomings. But like all other institutions with power, people like Wicks rise to the top: using entertaining, controversial stances to elevate themselves to great heights and build systems/people around him to protect his status. Jud despises men like Wicks, and being a flawed man himself, certainly had dark thoughts about how to get him off his large perched sermon stand. Wicks’s murder sends Jud through a crisis of faith, alongside the very atheist Blanc, tempted from both sides to steer away from his path. O’Connor’s performance is so good here we drift away from the murder mystery many times, because we’re equally if not moreso interested in Jud’s personal journey of religion and understanding, a journey every person has to go through at some point in their life.
Helping O’Connor along the way is another murderer’s row of great actors, ready to be a part of Benoit Blanc’s all stars. Like the other films, some get more play than others, but all do their part to make Wake Up Dead Man work so well. The standouts are Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, and Bridget Everett, really hitting home in their big moments. And then there’s Craig, able to grow out his hair since James Bond is now behind him. He’s fully got Benoit Blanc’s accent down now, just in time. Craig plays a wonderful counterpoint to O’Connor’s Jud, equal parts guiding worldly hand through the murder mystery, but also a temptation to give up religion in favor of logic and reason, getting a chance to be more serious here. Rian Johnson’s script is as great as his other two, maybe better. His murder mystery is wonderfully twisty as ever, completely grounded in its characters and themes, instead of trying to ham fist something there that would betray the lessons Wake Up Dead Man is sermonizing about.
So screw franchises, when you can make your own! I hope Benoit Blanc finds some murders across all aspects of society where power and riches might lead to murder. I can’t wait for some sort of political murder mystery next, diving Benoit Blanc into the world of politics. Because as we know about politics, in the words of Benoit Blanc: “I suspect foul play.”