This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Nick J’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
Simultaneously incredibly interesting and incredibly stupid, Rian Johnson failed to subvert my expectations that this was going to be anything but a just alright film. It wasn't something great but it wasn't a disaster either. Rian is able to get more out of the "whodunnit" formula by adding on moral dilemmas and hectic twists with every reveal being legitimately eye-widening, with amazing mise-en-scene and a great cast of antagonists in the form of a handful of great actors in their scariest roles to date: horrible white people. I didn't think Ana de Armas was all that good or memorable in the lead role, way too much of an angelic goody-two-shoes for me, but having such horribly unlikeable antagonists certainly helped, it's a film where you want to see the bad guys fail rather than the good guys succeed. Speaking of shit that didn't work for me, lots of terrible monkey-see-monkey-do writing poorly copying off of Joss Whedon's homework (and he, of course, copies off of a lot of other peoples' homework too), I had no idea what the fuck Daniel Craig was doing or saying or why he's so obsessed with donuts, and just...lie-induced vomiting? Are you fucking kidding me?
Anyways, I've seen lots of reviews going "Ey this movie was made for me." Nah, this wasn't made for me (If it was there'd be more anime titties), I like my interesting whodunnit delivered without vomit-inducing cringe or banal protagonists. If there wasn't a constant feeling that Johnson threw too much to see what stuck, I probably would've liked it more, but for now, I guess I'm the no-fun-allowed police.
