This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Jaina K’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
Rian Johnson does it again; taking a crime-genre and twisting things around just enough to make it feel fresh without losing the core essence. This, Brick, and The Brothers Bloom would make a great triple feature, and you could even squeeze Looper in there if you're feeling generous about the gangsters in that movie.
To borrow a phrase oft hurled from and at Johnson in regards to The Last Jedi, this film definitely subverted my expectations. The core conceit of a whodunit gets pointedly addressed in the first act, the second act is a different sort of drama altogether, and then the third act comes back and says "no, really, this actually is a whodunit, you didn't think we had forgotten that, did you??"
This movie is also shockingly contemporary. The trailers dropped some lines like "I read a tweet about a New Yorker article about you", and that sense of modernity is present for the entire film. Almost to its detriment in one scene, in which political events of not just modern times but literally current day get referred to pretty darn explicitly. I'm the last person to be upset about movies having a political slant, but the intrusion of that one scene into what was otherwise somewhat abstracted felt like a misstep to me.
In any case, this family drama-slash-murder mystery-slash-castigation of american entitlement is carried out by an incredible cast,all of whom sink their teeth into their roles with great enthusiasm. A couple of the younger characters are a little underutilized...but the plot seems to revolve most closely around those closest to the deceased patriarch, and the grandkids just don't fit super well into many scenes.
Overall I absolutely adored this film, and eagerly anticipate both a rewatch and Johnson's future endeavors.