Editor’s Note: Freeline Media’s movie critic, Mike Fried, is back with a look at how Father Jud riles up his new church in Wake Up Dead Man.
By MIKE FRIED
Wake Up Dead Man
**** 1/2
Father Jud is assigned to a new church, one led up by the mercurial Monsignor Wicks, a man who riles up his constant parishioners to hate. Among them are Dr. Nat who hates his wife who left him; Lee the writer who is embittered against the world; Martha, the Monsignor’s assistant; Samson the caretaker; Simone, a disabled woman who is basically keeping the church afloat; Vera Draven, an attorney who has handled the Wicks family affairs and her brother; and Cy, a right wing influencer who takes Wicks’ sermons and posts them on his feed.
Jud believes that Wicks is an abomination to the Church and, unfortunately for him, Wicks is murdered, making him a suspect. So Benoit Blanc is asked by the local police for his assistance on this unsolvable crime.
To say anything else would be a SPOILER!
But to say I enjoyed this movie would also be an understatement.
By acknowledging its roots in Christie, John Fickson Carr, Edgar Allen Poe and Dorothy Sayers, the film takes a dark turn, much darker than the first two in the series, but it is also a lot funnier as well, especially when one of the characters makes a reference to how the case will be solved and a libtard will make a podcast and then there will be a movie with idiot versions of us winding up on Netflix.
And it has such an extraordinary cast that it almost makes Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc a second banana. From Josh Brolin as Monsignor Wicks to Glenn Close (Glenn Close!!!) as Martha to Jeremy Renner as Dr. Nat to Kerry Washington as Vera to Andrew Scott as Lee to Thomas Haden Chrich as Samson to Cailee Spaeny as Simone to Mila Kunis as the local constable and Jeffrey Wright in a small role as Bishop Langstrom (albeit sharing the screen with Craig), Father Jud’s superior who sends him to work with Wicks, everyone delivers a class A performance.
And, of course, there’s Noah Segan, without whom no Knives Out movie would be complete.
Of course, I do not intend to denigrate Daniel Craig’s performance. His Blanc this time is more impatient and puzzled than he has been previously. But he carries himself well and Blanc’s commitment to solve an unsolvable homicide overrides all of his normally best instincts. He is excellent. And coming up a close second is Josh O’Connor as Father Jud who matches Craig every step of the way, performance wise. They make a wonderful onscreen pair.
Writer-director Rian Johnson has crafted a well done gothic murder mystery, full of shadows and light and darkness, that is just so satisfying. It’s a funny, twisty-turny script that the aforementioned mystery writers would approve of and delights in its improbabilities. Because that’s the nature of the impossible mystery — as it unfolds nothing makes sense until it is all tied together but, also, the facts can be made to fit the crime. And that’s how Rian Johnson plays us, like the pipe organ in the Perpetual Fortitude church. Isn’t that what all of this is for?
There’s some real Scooby Doo shit going on here and who done it? Rian Johnson done it.
WATCH IT!
**** 1/2
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.
