Every Knives Out movie is political – Wake Up Dead Man doubles down

Huge spoilers follow!

Anyone who wants to claim that writer-director Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” film series isn’t political is mistaken (although, to be honest, I think that’s a pretty difficult and perhaps impossible position to defend). Johnson’s work, in a broader sense, is political; his one-off “Star Wars” project, “The Last Jedi,” is probably on par with “Andor” as one of that franchise’s most overtly political outings. To that end, Johnson’s third “Knives Out” film, “Wake Up Dead Man,” which reunites him with his star Daniel Craig and assembles a phenomenal group of performers for the duo’s latest murder mystery featuring master detective Benoit Blanc (Craig), is the most political yet, and for good reason.

Before getting to the heart of the matter, here is a little history. The 2019 surprise blockbuster murder mystery, “Knives Out,” showed us the way some people treat immigrants and view the entire system, especially as the rich and spoiled members of the Thrombey family pretended to be nice to their late father’s caretaker and nurse, Marta (Ana de Armas) following his death. Its 2022 sequel, “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” explains how tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton) screwed over all of his friends and relatives to make his money unethically, leading to the point where Bron’s Glass Mansion – home to the real Mona Lisa on loan – explodes in flames. “Wake Up Dead Man,” Johnson’s latest installment in this burgeoning franchise, takes on religion, bigotry, and the objectively right-wing “manosphere,” and it does so explicitly and brilliantly without being gratuitous.

Let me start by saying that the script for “Wake Up Dead Man” is particularly good (in my personal opinion), in that Rian Johnson is able to capture the current political climate without being too blunt or, frankly, cheesy. He does this, in my opinion, through two specific characters: Jefferson Wicks, Monsignor of Our Lady of Perpetual Force, played by Josh Brolin, and the man who turns out to be his illegitimate son, Cy Draven, played by Daryl McCormack. Jefferson is a hateful and truly horrible man, and one of his worst characteristics is the way he preaches solely on an agenda of hatred and division.

As new Reverend Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) attempts to settle in at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, he is understandably put off by Jefferson’s increasingly bizarre confessions (which focus exclusively on Jefferson’s invented masturbation incidents, which he fabricates just to freak Jud out) and the fact that Jefferson’s “flock” is totally devoted to whatever he says, no matter what. In fact, there’s a whole montage of moments where Jefferson tailored his speeches to target newcomers, and we see same-sex couples, single parents, and COVID-conscious people fleeing his church (we don’t hear the sermons, but the visuals are enough).

Then there’s Cy, who represents toxic masculinity at its worst. Carrying with him a rigged iPhone that he uses to make tragic, manosphere-enhanced YouTube videos, Cy tells Jud at one point that he’s an aspiring right-wing politician and has been trying to get opinions on All in vain, clearly showing that he doesn’t believe in anything at all. Through Cy and Jefferson, Johnson makes his point about the modern political era very well.

During Cy and Jud’s conversation – which occurs quite early in the film, as it’s part of a sequence where Jud explains the suspects in the Jefferson Wicks murder mystery in a letter to Benoit Blanc – Jud gently suggests that Cy find a more productive platform for his potential political career than, you know, a bit of all at once. Cy responds – and I’m paraphrasing here – that maybe he could convince potential voters that the people they hate will come and take away the things they love if he can scare them enough. Beyond that, Cy’s habit of making YouTube videos focuses almost exclusively on Jefferson’s bombastic and seemingly hate-filled sermons, and he more or less tells Jefferson that he can scare people into following him down a dark road of hatred, bigotry, and fear of the proverbial “other.”

I’m not here to write an editorial. Fortunately, I don’t have to. Once you’ve seen “Wake Up Dead Man,” you know the film does that for me, and it does it without being as direct as it might be in the hands of a lesser director. (Paul Thomas Anderson’s bravura “One Battle After Another” honestly manages to achieve the same feat, and it’s remarkable to me that these two films were released within months of each other.) Johnson’s work, as I said, is largely political in nature, and he has been particularly good at writing parables that somehow aren’t irritating during a deeply divided political period in the United States. He did it once again with “Wake Up Dead Man,” and his message here – that hatred and resentment will only divide people further, which is why tyrants embrace it to gain power – is once again meaningful.