Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Nnamdi Asomugha
Starring: Nnamdi Asomugha, Melissa Leo, Aja Naomi King, Manny Jacinto, Lucinda Jenney
Every bloke, each man jack of us, likes to kid ourselves that we'd know what to do; that when it happened we would act decisively and in the efficiently brutal way required to diffuse the situation and protect the sanctity of our domain. But until it is in fact your house at night, and there is actually an unfamiliar noise arising from somewhere within which communicates, indisputably, that there is someone in the house who shouldn't be, those masculine fantasies mean nothing (the entire genre of home invasion movies are predicated upon this framework, after all). All bravado goes out of the same door or window which has just been illegally entered.
In tight indie The Knife, the familiar nightmare happens to Chris (Nnamdi Asomugha, who directs and co-wrote with Mark Duplass; a filmmaker engaged with themes of masculinity), a lower middle class black man who, after saying goodnight to his young daughters and having some warm and companionable nookie with his wife Alex (Aja Naomi King), registers that unwelcome nocturnal/domestic sound that we all dread...
There are complications. Chris has had a beer (Why not? He seems to be working hard renovating the house) and is on some sort of psych medication. Which possibly explains his black-out moment: he finds the invader, a middle-aged bag lady, in his kitchen, and, after (calmly, with dignity) attempting to get her to leave, in a jump cut comes to discover her on the floor, him standing over her and the rest of his family bunching up in wide-eyed terror at the kitchen door.
The narrative omission is crucial to the shifting moral landscape of The Knife and its clever manipulation of our sympathies. Alex acts quickly - the intruder is injured but not killed - and rings 911. As the kitchen fills with blue lights, Alex reconsiders the ultimate complication, which is Chris's ethnicity: "You're a black man in America, Chris," a demographic disproportionally affected by policing. In a moment of self-preservational panic, Alex places the title's eponymous weapon from the kitchen counter and into the fallen interloper's hand, before her pre-teen kids and husband and thus implicating them all in the crime...
The Knife opens with lovingly presented scenes of domesticity, non-causal sequences which serve to establish the simpatico nature of the family. What follows though is distinctly catalytic, with the decisive action of the placing of the knife leading to a tense causality. It is further bad luck for the beleaguered family (as Alex protests later, they are the victims as it was their house broken into), that the investigative detective, Detective Carlsen, is played by Melissa Leo, essaying another one of her superlatively tenacious characters. Leo's casting is, however, good fortune for the audience as she is as superb as ever, and her Carlsen, coming off a long shift to this late night/early morning mess, takes no prisoners. Ostensibly warm, through a careful due process she interviews each of the family, and quotidian aspects of the evening take on damning relevance as her demeanour hardens and the stability of the victim further weakens...
The Knife works on a blade edge dynamic, twisting our compassions. A cop remarks that "something don't feel right. Sensed it as I walked in": professional instinct or unconscious racial bias? Either way, within the diegesis his reflexes are correct, even as the film makes it clear that such profiling contributed to the desperate spontaneity of the knife's invidious placement.
Well performed throughout, what truly impresses about The Knife (especially as a debut) is its distinct lack of hyperbole, its sinister, at times gentle, inexorable pacing towards an inevitable denouement. It cuts deep.
The Knife is on UK/ROI VOD from January 12th.
