‘Knives Out’: ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ may be the best Blanc mystery yet

Writer-director Rian Johnson’s “Wake Up Dead Man” is the third in the “Knives Out” series and possibly the best. It’s a return, of sorts, to the Gothic trappings of the first entry, which starred Christopher Plummer as a patriarch whose demise kicks off the murder plot. The second film, “Glass Onion,” set on a sparkling Greek isle, featured Edward Norton as an Elon Musk-ish billionaire. The gorgeous scenery outshone the convoluted whodunit machinations.

“Wake Up” can be appreciated as an excellent example of that venerable murder mystery genre – the “impossible crime” – in which no solution to the murder seems rational. But Johnson also has a bit more on his mind than this. Without being too strenuous about it, the film also probes the nature of religious belief.

The action leading up to the Good Friday Murder, as the film deems it, begins with the transfer of Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor), a Catholic priest, to a small parish in upstate New York. The reason for the transfer is that Jud, in a fit of justifiable pique, punched out a fellow priest. It is soon revealed that Jud, a former boxer, once killed a man in the ring. He sees the priesthood as his spiritual salvation.

The parish, Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, is presided over by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a fire-and-brimstone type with a small flock of regulars. (The flock is small because he’s alienated everybody else in town.) Wicks and Jud, who attempts unsuccessfully to stage secret prayer meetings, are polar opposites: Jud is devoted to a loving God. Wicks is big on vengeance.

When the inevitable murder plot kicks in, the screen is aswarm with potential suspects from the parish – an alcoholic doctor (Jeremy Renner); a sci-fi novelist on the skids (Andrew Scott); an embittered lawyer (Kerry Washington); a celebrated former cellist who now uses a wheelchair (Cailee Spaeny); the spiky church lady (Glenn Close); and the groundskeeper (Thomas Haden Church). They all shine.

Daniel Craig’s Southern-fried virtuoso detective Benoit Blanc, the only mainstay in the franchise, unfortunately doesn’t turn up until around the 40-minute mark. But when he does, the proceedings pick up. He quickly dismisses Jud as a suspect, though the film is so replete with red herrings that nothing can be discounted. The puzzle at the heart of the investigation is: How can someone be stabbed to death while alone in a fully enclosed space with no other entry point and with all potential suspects positioned in plain view?

Blanc pooh-poohs what the parishioners regard as an unfathomable event. “It’s just a murder,” he intones to Jud, “and I solve murders.” Debating faith with Jud inside the church, he admits he feels the grandeur of the edifice but says, “I kneel at the altar of the rational.” Jud compliments him on his honesty. He then counters with his own take on religious faith as something profoundly true. Jud is really the film’s centerpiece and, as O’Connor movingly plays him, a fitting one. Jud wants to be a good priest because he believes that’s what the world so badly needs.