Film Shapes

Wake Up Dead Man (without a comma to be seen) is the third Benoit Blanc mystery, written and directed by Rian Johnson. Daniel Craig stars again as the Foghorn Leghorn-twanging detective but he's a touch overshadowed here by the 'supporting' cast, namely Josh O'Connor as young priest, Jud (Judas anyone?) Duplenticy, Josh Brolin as Monsignor Wicks and Glenn Close as church dogsbody Martha. Though it seems O'Connor is the new big thing, especially in indie films, I find him about as engaging as the weekly supermarket trip. In saying that, he's a pretty good foil for the rest of the characters, who have charisma by the bucketload. Blanc only appears around the start of act two, after all the set-up has been dealt with, in a very similar fashion to the previous films, Knives Out and Glass Onion . We gather that somebody has been killed on Good Friday, and the format for this exposition is a letter that Blanc asks Jud to write to him. This works well enough, (Keigo ...