My Cultural Diet

Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) has never met a murder he couldn’t solve, but that might change when he’s tasked with solving the death of a powerful priest in a rural New York community. Not surprisingly, religion plays a heavy role in Wake Up Dead Man, with writer/director Rian Johnson exploring Christianity at both its most toxic and most redemptive. Unfortunately, the film’s critique of toxic Christianity feels a bit too on the nose with Josh Brolin’s wild-eyed performance as the charismatic Monsignor Wicks, who spouts hate and division to the cult-ish flock that hangs on his every word. You can practically feel Johnson trying to beat you over the head with his talking points, and Brolin’s performance verges on parody. (Given that Wicks’s hateful sermons aren’t all that dissimilar to the extreme rhetoric emerging from MAGA and Christian nationalist circles, a subtler approach to the character might’ve worked better than Brolin’s exaggerated performance.) Thankfully, the film’s depiction of redemptive Christianity is wonderful, thanks to Josh O’Connor’s performance as the young Father Jud. In a lesser film by a lesser filmmaker, Jud would be too good, too wide-eyed, too naïve. However, Wake Up Dead Man never shies away from Jud’s flaws and checkered past, which makes his earnest desire to serve Christ and his flock all the more winsome for both the audience and a dyed-in-the-wool atheist like Blanc. Every time I thought that Wake Up Dead Man was going off the rails, Jud’s gentle, sacrificial faith won me back over.

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