Jason Bailey’s review published on Letterboxd:
Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion” kicks off with a giddily entertaining opening: It’s May 2020, the early days of covid, and several old friends receive, one after the other, a box. It comes from their friend Miles Braun, the eccentric tech billionaire, and it’s an elaborate puzzle box; they get each other on the phone (in a series of playful introductions and dizzily frame-slicing split-screens) and figure out how to solve the puzzle of each level, before landing on the box’s ultimate contents: an invitation to a long weekend on his private island off Greece. But then the box lands in front of its fifth recipient, who picks up a hammer and smashes it to pieces quickly and efficiently.
It’s a funny payoff — and also, on reflection, a clever preview of Johnson’s methodology for the entire film, the sequel to his 2019 hit “Knives Out” that manages to recapture the magic of that picture without resorting to replication or imitation. It feels, frankly, like something of a miracle.