BLANC CANVAS (KNIVES OUT)

Locked in our homes and unable to go to the cinema, Covid-19 has left film buffs scouring streaming services, TV schedules and their DVD collections to get their fix.

Classic movies are getting another outing.

Films we somehow missed in the cinema are finally getting watched.

Movies like 'Military Wives', 'Vivarium' and 'Calm With Horses', whose theatrical run was brought to an abrupt end, are getting rush released on streaming platforms.

With audiences devouring a grim diet of news shows reporting the mounting death tolls in various countries and the problems equipping frontline healthcare staff, we need a bit of escapism right now 

Our lives have begun to feel like they have suddenly been hijacked by the writers of 'Contagion'.

So a little bit of light relief is good for the soul right now.

Thank God, then, for the release on DVD and streaming services of Rian Johnson's 'Knives Out', the tongue-in-cheek Agatha Christie pastiche that caught the imagination of filmgoers at the tail end of last year.

'Knives Out' begins, like all well executed murder mysteries, with the discovery of a body and a tonne of suspects.

Christopher Plummer's successful author Harlan Thrombey has invited family members to his Massachusetts mansion for his 85th birthday party.

The following morning the mystery novelist's throat has been slit, while greedy family members eye up his mansion, his publishing business and his vast fortune. 

As with all good murder mysteries, we are presented with an open and shut case - in this scenario, an apparent suicide.

But we all know it is anything but clearcut.

We discover Harlan had threatened to expose his smug son-in-law, Don Johnson's Richard for cheating on his wife Jamie Lee Curtis' ambitious real estate agent Linda Drysdale. 

The author informed his son, Michael Shannon's Walt at the party that he was being let go from his role as CEO of the family publishing company.

After discovering his late son's wife Toni Collette's Joni has been stealing from him, Harlan also cut off the allowance that enables her to pay for her daughter, Katherine Langford's Megan.

And on the night of the party, Linda and Richard's arrogant playboy son, Chris Evans' Ransom also stormed out of the house after a blazing row with his grandfather.

Among the ranks of these deplorables are Walt's wife Riki Lindholm's Donna, their creepy neo-Conservative teenage son Jaeden Martell's Jacob and K Callan's great grandmother Wanetta.

But you also cannot discount Harlan's South American carer Ana de Armas' apparently earnest Marta Cabrera or Edi Patterson's housekeeper Fran, who keeps a cannabis stash in the house and has the misfortune of coming across the body.

Each member of the family and Marta are interviewed by Lakeith Stanfield's Detective Lieutenant Elliott and Noah Segan's Trooper Wagner.

But a private detective has also been hired to unravel the mystery - Daniel Craig's famous Louisiana sleuth Benoit Blanc.

Even this is wrapped in mystery, as Blanc has no idea who hired him.

What transpires is a mischievous cinematic game of 'Cluedo', as Blanc and Elliott dive into the accounts of their suspects - looking for motives, inconsistencies and eventually evidence.

Johnson illustrates his dialogue driven film with plenty of flashbacks but peppers it with a lot of humour.

Every plot point is exploited to the full, every character trait is squeezed.

One character cannot tell a lie without throwing up.

Another keeps changing the name of the country Marta comes from every time he references she is from South America.

No detail is wasted.

But amid the attention to detail, the overall impression 'Knives Out' leaves is an abundant sense of fun.

Johnson and his cast leave you in no doubt they are having a lot of laughs with the script.

But they do this without being self-indulgent or insufferably smug and that may be its greatest achievement.

Craig sports a delightfully over the top Louisiana accent.

Plummer smirks as he metes out his punishment to his family members.

Shannon seethes with repressed anger for much of the film until he finally lets go.

Collette is, as usual, a delight as a shifty daughter-in-law.

Lee Curtis relishes playing a straight talking, measure the drapes daughter.

Johnson has never been better as her patronising, slimy husband.

Evans drips arrogance as the ridiculously named Ransom.

de Armas impresses as a nurse who seems just too nice to be in this company of wolves and turns in a potentially star making performance.

M Emmet Walsh turns up as a groundskeeper in a typically goofy cameo and the remainder of the cast from Patterson to Langford to Stanfield, from Martell to Callan, Lindholm to Segan rise to the occasion.

Marlene Forte turns up as Marta's illegal immigrant mum, while Frank Oz and Joseph Gordon-Levitt also make brief appearances.

Shot on location in and around Boston, Johnson delivers a frothy murder mystery that never loses its comic fizz.

Sharply edited by Bob Ducsay and handsomely shot by Steve Yedlin, it moves along at a brisk pace and never overstays its welcome.

As a murder mystery, it keeps you on your toes as you refuse to buy into the obvious.

But it also satisfies those audiences looking for a subtle social and political allegory.

Johnson is apparently planning more Benoit Blanc adventures which is something to look forward to when normality returns.

But he has undoubtedly also set an undoubtedly high bar for himself and whatever tongue-in-cheek mystery he conjures up next.

His audience will wait with bated breath.

But in the meantime, in these Covid-19 times, at least we can find escapism in the first Benoit Blanc mystery. 

 ('Knives Out' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on November 29, 2019 and was made available on DVD and streaming platforms from March 30, 2020)