Director-writer Rian Johnson's Knives Out, opening today, is an old-fashioned whodunit with lots of humor and very modern social themes.
The tale of a wealthy patriarch (Christopher Plummer) who dies mysteriously leaving his mostly greedy offspring to argue over the estate, is ripe for discussion for around the Thanksgiving dinner table in that it tackles issues of social class, race, wealth disparity, privilege, and immigration.
It also boasts a star-studded cast that includes Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Lakeith Stanfield, Katherine Langford, and Jaeden Martell.
"It was a part that I was excited to play, it was a part that I thought I could play, it was a part I don't always get the opportunity to play," Avengers star Chris Evans tells The Advocate about his role as the patriarch Harlan Thrombey's gadabout grandson and the son of Curtis and Johnson's characters.
The film is loaded with the twists and turns standard in murder mysteries, but Knives Out also does a deep dive into immigration and class issues in which the white wealthy family members consider themselves evolved for referring to Harlan's nurse Marta ( de Armas) as one of the family while also conflating her home country with several Latin American countries.
"For me as a Latina and immigrant, I feel really attracted to the part and the way it was portrayed on the page, and the arc of the character and how she deals with situations that I think personally I have been in in my life," de Armas tells The Advocate. "In the context of this family and dealing with people with so much money and power and how she navigates the situation, I think is an inspiring role and take on how we are represented."
Evans, whose character shares the most screen time with de Armas (who costars in the next James Bond film, No Time to Die) lauds her work.
"Ana really has to carry the movie in a lot of ways. It's one of those roles that, on paper, could be thankless because every other character gets to make the jokes and they get to be horrible and they get to be silly and funny. And Ana has to be the moral compass," Evans says.
"I was a little worried about that," de Armas says.
"But somehow, she's come out as she stole it," Evans replies. "While you're filming those scenes ... in my head I was like, 'She's killing it.'"
Watch The Advocate's interview with Evans and de Armas below. Knives Out is currently in theaters.
