Marlowe review – worldweary Liam Neeson makes for low-energy private eye – The Guardian
Raymond Chandler’s well-known detective Philip Marlowe doesn’t fairly come again to life on this new film from Neil Jordan, tailored from the novel of the identical identify by Booker prize winner John Banville, writing underneath his style pen identify Benjamin Black. There are some droll touches and the prewar Los Angeles manufacturing design appears good. However listening to the dialogue generally looks like wading by treacle. The wisecracks fizzle, and Liam Neeson, within the main function, isn’t precisely on his most dynamic kind. The best way the character has been conceived appears to intensify an exhausted worldweariness and, whereas I’m positive that Neeson may have given the half among the wiry power of a Humphrey Bogart or Elliot Gould, he by some means at all times appears as if he’d like nothing greater than a sit-down with a cup of tea and a biscuit.
It’s 1939 and Marlowe is approached by the time-honoured shady girl: Clare Cavendish (Diane Kruger) needs him to search out an ex-lover who – a bit like Graham Greene’s Harry Lime – might have faked his grisly demise in an vehicle accident, and should since have been glimpsed in Mexico. Marlowe should take care of plenty of tough characters, together with Clare’s rich and overbearing mom Dorothy Quincannon (Jessica Lange), a former film actress whose new husband (Mitchell Mullen) is a creepy Joe Kennedy determine with a fortune constructed by bootlegging; he now owns a film studio and is ambassador to Nice Britain.
Marlowe additionally encounters individuals who need him to go away, reminiscent of Floyd Hanson (Danny Huston), the dead-eyed supervisor of the ritzy personal membership exterior which the disputed corpse was discovered, and clean businessman Lou Hendricks (Alan Cumming) who, like Dorothy, tries to rent Marlowe himself. There’s a bit little bit of enjoyable and curiosity alongside the best way and Lange has some enjoyable along with her eccentric persona, however this feels under-energised.
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