Norton should have orphaned ‘Motherless Brooklyn’

MOVIE REVIEW

“MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN”

Rated R. At AMC Loews Boston Common, Regal Fenway Stadium and suburban theaters.

Grade: C+

An East Coast-set “Chinatown” wannabe with a private detective with Tourette Syndrome, “Motherless Brooklyn” has a lot going on.

Some of the time, it’s compelling, thanks largely to its cast. Some of the time, it puts the faux in phony. It is based on the award-winning 1999 novel by Brooklyn born-and-raised author Jonathan Lethem, adapted by the Boston-born actor-filmmaker Edward Norton over the course of a reported 20-year span. Norton also stars in the film as Lethem’s oddly named protagonist Lionel Essrog. Although the novel is set in modern times, Norton moves the action to a 1950s New York City of such film noir classics as “Pickup on South Street” and “While the City Sleeps.”

When we first meet Lionel in voice-over, we are told that “there is something wrong with (his) head.” For one thing, his “head” calls him “Bailey.” Most other people in the film call him “Freakshow” or “Brooklyn.” This is not the case with his mentor/surrogate father Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), who calls him Lionel and gets killed off early on in the action, making unlikely heir Lionel the new Frank, complete with Frank’s hat and .45 automatic, a souvenir we assume of Frank’s service in World War II.

The only thing that calms Lionel’s nerves is weed he smokes in a pipe. This is apparently a sign that Lionel is also meant to be some sort of Beat-era hipster, and at times his squeaks, shouts and outbursts of such words as “If” are associated with jazz music, although not to much of a point (some, like me, may feel the disorder is exploited in the story). Among Lionel’s cohorts at Frank’s business are Danny Fanti (Dallas Roberts) and Tony Vermonte (Bobby Canavale), although I was not sure what they did.

The femme fatale in this semi-coherent noir is Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a beautiful, young African American woman, who lives near her father’s Harlem jazz club and is an activist in a fight to stop the city from taking over neighborhoods and tearing them down. The plot will involve a scheme to strip homeowners in predominantly African-American neighborhoods of their homes, using eminent domain. These efforts are spearheaded by a supposedly visionary developer named Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin), a real-life Robert Moses knockoff, whose estranged sibling Paul Randolph (a floundering Willem Dafoe) lingers in the story’s anterooms, not quite sure what his role is. One of the bad guys in this story is played by Fisher Stevens. Another is a real-life giant, someone you would hardly notice in a crowd. Leslie Mann is fun as Frank’s not-so-grieving widow.

Norton’s first directing job since the forgettable 2000 romantic-comedy “Keeping the Faith,” “Motherless Brooklyn” is the shadow of a shadow of Los Angeles-set “Chinatown.” Unlike Roman Polanski’s masterpiece, which boasts a signature performance by Jack Nicholson, Norton’s film is a pulp-noir pastiche with Norton in a role that might remind some of his stammering altar boy turn in the 1996 thriller “Primal Fear.” In scenes involving an unnamed trumpet player, actor Michael Kenneth Williams makes you wonder, Why isn’t this movie about him? My sister, my daughter.

(“Motherless Brooklyn” contains profanity, sexually suggestive language and drug use.)

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2pzeKgb