“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” premieres next month on Netflix. Meantime, it’s playing for just a few days in a few hundred theaters nationwide, despite the theatrical success of the 2019 film preceding this one. There you have it: In late 2022, the mysteries of motion picture distribution rival any of the plotting afoot in writer-director Rian Johnson’s sequel.
Like the first, the second stars Daniel Craig as the Southern-fried detective Benoit Blanc, this time turning his powers of detection toward a murder mystery party thrown by a tech giant billionaire on his own private Greek island. Call it “Mamma Mia! There’s a corpse!”
We’ll attempt to keep the premise description free from spoiler contaminants. The title “Glass Onion” refers to the roundish crystal wonder of a bachelor pad owned by billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton). Every year, he invites the same few friends and acolytes for a weekend of insidious wealth among his pals, the “disrupters.” They include a tightly wound Connecticut governor (Kathryn Hahn); a blithely offensive model/“influencer” (Kate Hudson); a pistol-packing “men’s movement” internet star (Dave Bautista) and his girlfriend, Whiskey (Madelyn Cline); and a brilliant scientist (Leslie Odom Jr.) who works for Bron. Detective Blanc receives an invite as well, for reasons not immediately clear.
