"Wake Up Dead Man"

☆☆☆☆

Peter Falk did it every few weeks for years. Angela Lansbury did it every Sunday night for a decade. Agatha Christie did it 75 times in 55 years.

Solving murders is so entertaining it can be done over and over with virtually no loss of enjoyment, and now the same can be said for Rian Johnson, writer and director of mysteries featuring the flamboyant, drawling, Southern detective Benoit Blanc.

Netflix, which produces the movies and deigns to release them in a handful of theaters in a shameless quest for Oscars (one that in a way undermines the very concept of theatrical releases, which they claim to be supporting), has decided not to call these "Benoit Blanc Mysteries," but "Knives Out Mysteries," named for the 2019 film that introduced Blanc as the greatest (living) detective in the world.

So, let it be known that except for Blanc's presence, there's nothing at all to connect the latest film, Wake Up Dead Man, with the first or with Glass Onion, the second and, to my mind, best of the films. In Knives Out, Johnson and star Daniel Craig ("He's James Bond!") were trying to get a handle on Blanc, and this time around they're working in what's now familiar territory, but Glass Onion is the one in which Blanc first came fully alive. It's also got the most energy, though that doesn't mean Wake Up Dead Man is any sort of a slouch.

It's a fulfilling mystery, a terrifically well-made film, an entertaining lark, and, in the style of the lush 1970s adaptations of Christie's novels (like Murder on the Orient Express and Death On the Nile), it's an opportunity to see lots of familiar actors in roles that range from scenery-chewing to throwaway.

Like every movie, in my mind, it's best experienced in a movie theater, but at home you'll be able to shout out, "Is that ... ?" when a new face appears, and remind yourself where you've seen them before. It's nice to know, in a way, that even in today's more blockbuster-driven Hollywood, there are still modern equivalents of, say, Jack Warden, Olivia Hussey and Roddy McDowall.

Wake Up Dead Man stars Josh O'Connor ("He's in everything!") as a young priest named Jud Duplenticy, whose last name doesn't sound like "duplicity" for no reason. He's a committed man of the cloth, but a foul-mouthed former street fighter, too, and the church doesn't know what to do with him. They send him to upstate New York (curiously, the movie is set in the U.S. but feels in every other regard like a story about a proper murder in a small British countryside town), where he's placed at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, a parish ruled with an iron fist by Monsignor Wicks ("He's in all those Westerns!"). He, in turn, is ruled by the church's similarly iron-fisted manager Martha Delacroix ("Oh, wow, Glenn Close!").

Though they're arguably the film's biggest stars, the church is filled with loyal parishioners, and they are each a suspect, potential red herring and reasonably well known movie or TV star. You may not recognize them all, but in a movie like this, part of the fun is thinking, "Where do I know them from?" There's the one from that TV show, the other one from that TV show, the one from the movie about wine ...

Monsignor Wicks is the unfortunate victim in Wake Up Dead Man, and writer-director Johnson is both a huge fan of murder-mysteries and clearly an expert designer of them, too, so it would take a second or third viewing to be sure, even after it's all solved, if you saw everything and got all the clues you needed. I haven't watched it again, but if the lavish '70s Christie movies are any indication, everything is there on screen, right in front of you, but the beauty of these kinds of movies is that you can't see what you don't realize you're looking for.

Local police, led by Mila Kunis ("That's who it is!"), call in Blanc, who is more than a little excited by what appears to be an impossible murder. The movie spends a great deal of time — it's nearly two and a half hours long — setting it all up, and adding in some genuine surprises and twists that seem as impossible as the murder itself.

Craig has another blast playing Blanc, O'Connor is effectively nonplussed when all fingers seem to be pointing at poor Father Jud, and the film maintains Johnson's unique sense of humor, even if it's not as flat-out funny as either Knives Out or Glass Onion.

It's just a good time at the movies. Or, if you will, on the sofa in front of the TV, which is hardly as exciting. But it's still much more than passable entertainment — it's devilishly fun.

Viewed December 13, 2025 — Alamo Drafthouse LA

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