The Shoemaker Bugle

By Muna Agada

Cast: Daniel Craig (Benoit Blanc), Janelle Monáe (Cassandra and Helena Brand), Kathryn Hanh  (Claire Debella), Kate Hudson (Birdie Jay), Edward Norton (Miles Bron), Leslie Odom Jr. (Lionel Toussaint), Dave Bautista (Duke Cody), Madelyn Cline (Whiskey)

Director: Rian Johnson 

Screenplay: Rian Johnson Distributed by: Netflix

Synopsis:

Detective Blonc (Daniel Craig) is back at it again, when he’s invited to tech billionaire Miles Bron’s (Edward Norton) deserted Greek Island for a murder mystery party that takes a turn when someone really ends up dead. Now Blanc is on the case to try and figure out who was the culprit.

Things I liked: First thing I liked would have to be the set: the deserted island, and the scenery of it all was just beautiful. The cast would have to be another thing, it’s made up of a lot of A-list actors, which worried me. Most of the time movies with big known actors tend to be bad, but this was good. You could tell that the actors were committed to their roles and were giving it their all. I liked the spin that they had with this movie.

The first Knives Out movie got big in the first place because it added a twist to the average, everyday murder mystery film. And this film was no exception. You find out that Detective Blanc wasn’t really invited by Miles, but by Helena Brand (Janelle Monáe), to discover who killed her twin sister Cassandra, who used to be friends and business partners with the group, but was stabbed in the back by them. She was ready to get her justice but ended up dying from an apparent “suicide”. There was also two murders being investigated, because Duke Cody (Dave Bautista) also ends up being killed. 

Things I hated: I feel like the murderer in the film was pretty obvious from the get go, which the first film did as well, but I was hoping it wouldn’t be so predictable this time. Spoiler Alert: the killer ends up being Miles, the one who killed Cassandra and Duke. And Duke’s cause of death was obvious, he dies when Miles slips him a drink with pineapples in them, something we learn from the beginning, he’s allergic to. I figured that out from the second he dropped dead. 

I was also disappointed that they didn’t use some of the actors more, like how they did for Janelle Monáe–I mean she plays two characters. Like Dave Bautista who ends up dead within the first 20 minutes and Madelyn Cline who they made a big deal out of in the promos, but barely used her. I just thought her character was useless and meaningless. In the movie Cline is dating Bautista’s character and they had a rocky relationship. The movie could have used that to their advantage and made Cline be the one who killed Bautista out of revenge for treating her like garbage in the relationship. He would basically sell her body to promote himself.