New England-born director Rian Johnson has been the talk of the town since he took a stroll through a galaxy far far away inStar Wars: The Last Jedi. Two years later, Johnson solidified his fan base with the release ofKnives Out, a murder mystery starring Daniel Craig and Ana de Armas. However, this wasn’t Johnson’s first mystery story, and it wouldn’t be his last.
Despite utilizing non-linear storytelling in his recent films, the director typically tells a straightforward mystery. The audience knows who all the players are and have their suspicions about the perpetrator, despite key pieces of information being withheld. Therefore, it stood to reason that Johnson would continue this formula withhis new Peacock seriesPoker Face, starring Natasha Lyonne (Russian Doll). Instead, he’s turned the genre on its head and taken a different route.
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Brick, Johnson’s 2005 debut film, kept the culprit hidden from the audience with twists and turns until the very end.Knives Outshowed an evolution in Johnson’s technique as it presented a long list of suspects and gave breadcrumbs that implicated each of them. Johnson revealed the murderer earlier than other murder mysteries but left just enough doubt for the audience to know there was something afoot. Johnson toyed with the classic whodunit structureonce more withGlass Onion, not revealing the actual murder until an hour into the film.Poker Facecontinues the director’s evolution.
This new series is marketed as a “murder mystery of the week,” with Charlie Cale (Lyonne) solving a new case in each episode. Lyonne’s character, a casino worker, has a preternatural ability to tell when somebody is lying that gets her into more trouble than it should. After the death of her friend, Cale goes on the run and gets wrapped into solving a different mystery at each of her stops.Johnson leans away from the classic whodunit structurein favor of something a little less known.
Audience members can see that there’s something different withPoker Face’sstructure from the first episode. Typically, viewers spend an entire movie or episode trying to figure out the perpetrator, only to figure it out seconds before the protagonist. There is nowhodunit inPoker Face. Each episode shows the murderer, murder weapon, method, and motive within the first twenty minutes of the episode. Very few questions remain beyond “how is Charlie going to catch them?”
This is becausePoker Faceisn’t about the murders but rather how the murderers are caught. Johnson intended for this series to be a fun, character-driven “howcatchem” story in the same vein asColumboandMurder, She Wrote. Also known as an inverted detective story, a howcatchem shows the process of the murder, putting the audience three steps ahead of the story’s detective. It’s about the characters, and Charlie Cale is quite the character with a past that begs for more exploration.
Charlie is presented as a down-and-out gambler with questionable morals, no plan, and a heart of gold.She’s a human lie detector. She exhibits so much depth, and the people she meets along the way are just as 3-dimensional. Even the guilty parties. Inverting the detective story allows viewers to invest more in Charlie and the cast. A traditional whodunit is motivated by the plot as opposed to character decisions. The protagonist appears on scene because that’s where the plot demands them to be, not because they chose to arrive.
The plot ofKnives Outdemands that Benoit Blanc arrives on the scene to investigate Harlan Thrombey’s murder. He doesn’t choose to be there. That doesn’t mean the characters in a plot-driven story don’t make choices. Of course they do. However, their choices are guided by external forces as opposed to their desires or motivations. Not only that,Benoit Blanc is the same personat the end that he was at the beginning of the film.
On the other hand, Charlie Cale ends up in the situations she does because of her own choices. She’s on the run because she couldn’t let her friend’s murderer get away. Charlie chooses to break a case wide open in New Mexico after befriending a trucker named Marge. Each episode explores her relationship with different characters to create an emotional connection with the audience.
Dostoevsky wrote the first howcatchem story in 1866 withCrime and Punishment, although author R. Austin Freeman claims to have invented the style in 1912. The term wasn’t coined until 1963 and became apopular format after 1971’sColumbo,Johnson’s primary inspiration for his modern caper. Many procedurals such asMonk,Luther, andCriminal Mindsused this structure.
Poker Faceshows fans that Rian Johnson isn’t done exploring his craft. Considering his first full-length movie debuted in 2005 and only has six movies under his belt, this director has only begun. He’s alreadyhard at work with theKnives Out 3scriptwith no telling where his evolution as a storyteller and director will take the audience.
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