Rian Johnson's WAKE UP DEAD MAN - A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY (2025)

It is not all that common to get any American-made film, much less one that has relatively commercial aspirations - the relatively part largely due to this being a Netflix movie that is getting a cursory release (almost over by the time of this writing and on the service by Friday December 12th, but that is commercial nonetheless and given this cast) - to take religious faith and practice very seriously and maturely.  

You might think that another Benoit Blanc mystery might not be a place to explore how one wrestles and grapples with and can feel outright damned by not only one's faith but faith in humanit, but Rian Johnson takes the story of two Priests at odds at a contentious NY State church and the fallout after one of them is found murdered as seriously as, oh, Martin Scorsese with Silence.  

(No, really, don't get up and leave, I still have to prostheletize in Blog form!)

That could sound like a stretch, but Wake Up, Dead Man is a classic sort of "Smuggler" picture (a critical phrase that I got from Scorsese in his American Movies documentary, natche), where the vehicle of a genre is useful to get some greater ideas through to an audience that normally would look at such things as Eat Your Vegetables stuff.  

Rian Johnson couldn't make a sermon or something dull as that, and on the contrary I could see some finding a few of his winks and nods and cultural references in his dialog (in this film I mean but you could say others) as tiring - this is up to and including a Netflix mention, a Star Wars line (ruling the country err galaxy as father and son, you say), and a Big Lebowski joke (that one lands) - but he has a lot on his mind that is expressed through this character of Father Jud (Josh O'Connor in a sublimely confident performance - confident as in going for looking frazzled and stressed and bewildered half of the run time here and succeeding at never being too comedic) and what happens when his more tolerant and kind perspective clashes against conservative ideology and just general assholery of Father Wicks (Josh Brolin).

Father Jud has a compelling back-story, to be sure, with his ex-boxer accidental killing history on his head and the Priesthood as a place where, in Blanc's perspective, Jud can get through his guilt by giving himself over to helping others and committing to Jesus and so on.  But the complexity is seeing how Jud is seeing so much of being "tested" by Wicks and the church (and an all-timer performance from Glenn Close, more on her in a moment) and that he is in his way damaged like the other townspeople (well, maybe not bad as all that, but his anger that surfaces is implosive to Wicks explosive energy)  He even obfuscates a detail of the crime scene that gets him into tougher waters, all while Benoit Blanc, an ardent non believer, sees this nearly impossible crime peel away layer by layer and that it does come down to....belief.

The interesting thing about this third Benoit Blanc mystery is that the ensemble is not particularly strong as compared to the other two entries - Knives Out and Glass Onion - but the fair trade off is that the story here and how these characters unfold is still very satisfying while also depicting clashing worldviews head on.  The politics underlying the film aren't subtle, and when the young would-be politician Cy character played by Daryl McCormack runs down how he hasn't been able to make it in that world it is funny more that there isn't a strand of political football that he hasn't fumbled. 

But it is also in how Johnson shows this collective group, the detail of how Father Wicks singles out newcomers in his sermon to the point that they leave making the ones who stay all the more radicalized, and that there is an appeal there that Johnson doesn't deny the audience (though there are many red flags to Wicks's approach that probably - definitely- outweigh that).  And all the while, it must be noted, the deft ways how Johnson sets up so much in the first half hour, through Jud's descriptions of what led up to everything, and how it pays off in pieces, shows his continuous mastery of not just building up a mystery but reveling in the visual details (a man in a black cloak outside from far away with a light? Of course!  And how about that one vat full of... said too much).

But Father Jud is one of those characters I keep thinking about - I've seen the film twice now - because of how his morality is written and how O'Connor acts it out.  There is one part I won't mention specifically (not because I worry about spoilers but because it is more fun to go in fresh) but just to say that Jud almost does something that while objectively correct is not the smart move in terms of where the story is going to go (Benoit literally has to step in to turn him around and about face it). 

There is another that is more of a direct revelation: when he is working feverishly with Benoit Blanc to find out a new strange piece of information that has come to light and calls a local woman working for a small construction company, she comes out with a personal detail that stops Jud in his tracks.  Suddenly he is not on the case, he is... a priest again.  And it is amusing and then moving how Benoit has to take a beat, as we do watching, as he gives this woman spiritual counsel and comfort on the phone.

He didn't have to do that, but in a way it is in his nature and there is something deep and true in the way that scene is acted, how each of the actors takes time between their lines delivered, that conveys this intrinsic understanding of what someone who is genuinely concerned for someone else's well being is like.  

This moment does lead to some other story complications, but it is less about that I think about and how about the behavior and look in the eyes O'Connor conveys.  It is somewhat ironic (or just an intentional parallel mayhap) that Johnson wrote in a Star Wars gag (the director of the second or third *best one, yes you say) when Wake Up Dead Man is with a good wit and mind about the proverbial Light Side and Dark Sides of human nature.  It is seen through greed and want as much as questioning and then through judgment (the flashbacks to the "Harlot Whore" that was Wick's mother are rather harrowing and charged).  

It is much harder to be someone who is "good," or it should be said striving for kindness and a gentle yet firm way, when being greedy and self centered usually gets more and quicker results.  And as one sees in a church the act of confession, which Jud does and then Martha does on two very crucial instances (and Wicks treats as kind of a sick joke on his young not ever protege), perhaps letting out what is bottled up inside is what will make things better.  Or it leads to worse things.   And all the while, Benoit Blanc is there on the side slowly coming to belief even as he is still the forever believer in reason - and if he has an arc at all, it is his slow realization that the facts of the case are like a religious story: too good to be true, and because it is there has to be more there...

The point I mean to get to is there are a lot of ideas about how one can live, how one chooses to live, how one should not live but does anyway, and how a certain determination of the spirit (for Jud, for Wicks, for Martha) creates a perfect storm of madness sometimes.  And Glenn Close as Martha is so strong because of how sparingly she is used in the story... but just wait for what becomes of her character in the final reel, and you realize why she is one of our great performers, full of giant touches and ten different looks in the eye that are all coming from the same place.  It is eztraordinary work and for the life of me I can't fathom why she isn't getting awards attention (side note I know).

I come back at the end here to my Scorsese/Silence comparison.  Of course that film handles Christianity in another context altogether of 16th century Japan.  But aside from a specific detail about hiding away something from the world in the end and even a final shot that feels too similar to be a coincidence (hopefully some film journo asked him about it), both films are about the struggles of not so much good and evil but what it means to have some moral sense of oneself. 

As much as Wicks proclaims he does and to fortify a church that has been attacked he says from all sides as his own sort of moral justification for what he does and, indeed, his attempt to eacape at the end (Brolin does a lot with a little by the way to make this seeming cliche to feel more complex, or at least that his bluster and bigness is a performance of a kind), and Jud claims be can cut him out and save the church, Jud can't do that really because he has to save himself first.  

That sort of struggle makes this film more profound than expect.... even as, it should be noted, much of the movie is still very funny (if not on par with 1 and 2).  And what a final needle drop!

(*yes, it is. I wont be taking questions at this time)