Film
fromThe New Yorker
2 days ago"Wake Up Dead Man" and the Whodunnit Renaissance
Contemporary whodunnits update the classic murder-mystery formula with social commentary, satire of amateur sleuthing, and saturation on streaming platforms.
I grew up with three brothers. Several canon events in the '90s shaped our dynamic to this day. There was a certain game of Risk. There was the day mom relinquished her Hi8 video camera to us with no strings attached. A bike accident here, a rock thrown down the stairs there. I'll never forget (nor forgive) the "snowball fight" with algae at the river. While we were careening through these incidents, most of the time we were unaware that we were making history.
We meet young priest Reverend Jud Duplenticy (O'Connor), who turned to Christ after he killed a man in the boxing ring, assigned to the small parish in upstate New York. It's here, in a house of God, where an impossible murder plays out like a biblical miracle. Arriving in the quaint village, Jud is met with the fiery wrath of Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). Jefferson immediately sets the tone for Jud's new priest tenure with detailed confessions of his masturbation sins.
The new film is based on Richard Osman's bestseller about four unlikely friends in a retirement home who meet weekly to solve cold cases. But when an unexplained death happens on their own doorstep, the fun and games become all too real. Dame Helen, 80, Brosnan, 72, Imrie, 73, and Gandhi star Sir Ben, 81, lead a stellar cast in the Steven Spielberg-produced whodunnit.