Rian Johnson Isn't Trying To Reinvent The Detective Genre With Poker Face

Most filmmakers get bit by the movie bug early in life. They walk out of "Star Wars," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," or "Jurassic Park," and, like getting off a great amusement park ride, are desperate to get back in line to relive the experience all over again. At some point, they have to go home. That's where the dreaming starts. They imagine the further adventures of their big screen heroes, and, eventually, craft whole universes of their own. Sure, they'd love to add their own chapter to the "Indiana Jones" films, but what they really want is to create their own Indiana Jones. As they get older and discover other genres like Westerns, musicals, and gangster flicks, they study their tropes and unavoidably put their own spin on them.

The best filmmakers are the ones who seek not to replicate their formative experiences, but to work within different genres on their own terms. This is precisely what Rian Johnson did with his 2005 high school noir, "Brick." It's not a reinvention, nor is it a homage; it's just a hard-boiled detective yarn set among lockers and classrooms. Johnson is an avowed fan of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, as well as the Coen Brothers' tricksy variation on the former's "The Glass Key" with "Miller's Crossing," but he writes ecstatically with his own voice. The result is a pure neo-noir that never once feels like a gimmick.

Johnson subsequently put his stamp on con artist movies ("The Brothers Bloom"); time travel sci-fi ("Looper"); that galaxy far, far away ("Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi"); and whodunits ("Knives Out," "Glass Onion"). He's since found a fellow traveler in Natasha Lyonne, who stars in his and Peacock's murder-of-the-week series "Poker Face." Like most of Johnson's work, however, there's no re-inventing involved.

The obvious touchstone here is Peter Falk's "Columbo," but Natasha Lyonne brings her own quirkily deft touch to the tried-and-true formula with "Poker Face." When it came to writing the show, Rian Johnson had a straightforward approach: don't imitate or revise; just do the thing. In an interview with Alison Herman at The Ringer, he explained how he indulged his ardor for TV mysteries while making them his own:

"In a weird way, putting faith in — I was about to say tropes, but I guess that's kind of the right word — the things about that procedural format that work. That, in a way, is similar to 'Knives Out' and 'Glass Onion,' the mystery movies that I've done. That's one thing I learned in terms of approaching genres, is to not feel that it has to be a reinvention. If you love something, there's a reason you love it. The object is not to reinvent; it's just to do it really well. And if you do it really well in your voice, it will feel new. It will feel fresh."

It does work. Emphatically so. Lyonne's been acting for almost 30 years, and it's been a thrill to watch her really hit her creative stride with "Orange Is the New Black," "Russian Doll," and now "Poker Face." Her latest series works because, like Johnson, she isn't mimicking beloved sleuths like Columbo, Kojak, and Jessica Fletcher. She's creating Charlie Cale, and we're falling in love with the character because we love Lyonne.

Let this be a lesson to the clods who've slickly, soullessly revamped classic TV shows like "Hawaii Five-O" and "Magnum P.I." We loved those series because they were different. If you want to win us over, don't New Coke these shows. Do something different.