Puzzle-solver Benoit Blanc is invited to a super-VIP vacation on an exclusive Greek island, along with multi-billionaire Miles Bron’s small group of longtime friends. The guests, all nearly as rich as Bron, are former model Birdie and her assistant Peg, politician Claire, scientist Lionel, chauvinistic influencer Duke with his girlfriend Whiskey, and the mysterious Andi, co-responsible for Miles’ fortune. but ousted by him without much compliments. The small group is supposed to solve a mystery created by the multi-billionaire, but the crimes will soon become real. It will be up to that eccentric genius of Benoit Blanc to get to the bottom of a very complicated mystery and make sure that at least someone returns alive from the island.
Glass Onion follows the international success of the first whodunit starring Blanc, that Cena con delitto – Knives Out clearly inspired by the masterpieces of Agatha Christie, updating them to the present time and to the contemporary socio-economic dynamics.
Writer-director Rian Johnson is the mastermind behind this series of inventor boxes (which will also include a third chapter already in the pipeline) and Daniel Craig abandons the pout of James Bond to embody a hero whose prodigious ability to find connections and solutions seems to be contradicted by his propensity for making a fool of himself: in this episode we see him stumbling, running awkwardly and wearing pajamas with hilarious self-irony (and in the original his speech and accent alone are worth the film).
In this second chapter the bar obviously rises, and the story is more complex, more pyrotechnic and richer in settings and special effects than the previous one, starting with the setting on an island and in a futuristic building complex dominated by the construction of onion-shaped glass that gives the film its title: and like an onion, the plot gradually reveals its layers, which should be visible to the naked eye (like layers of glass) and instead remain obscure until Blanc, and Johnson, they don’t reveal them to us. Everything happens at a high speed, with continuous twists and turns, changes of place (and clothes) and camera movements.
Glass Onion is a shimmering clockwork, and if depth is not among its horizons, the plot is not without sociological digressions commenting on current society, in line with the new big screen dramedys such as Parasite or Triangle of Sadness. The choice of the small group of ultra-rich (as already in Knives Out) invites us to reflect on the ethical void and the lack of scruples of the more privileged classes, especially when contrasted with the “popular population”. Blanc becomes a social equalizer and a moral leveler, as well as a very high bourgeois hypocrisy exposer. And some characters are evident alter egos of the tycoons of the present, primarily that Miles Bron who is between Zuckerberg and Musk.