Marlowe 
                                                
Director: Neil Jordan
Year: 2022
Rating: 6.5
Like a thousand noirs before it, this begins with a svelte blonde being ushered into an office to hire a tough rumpled detective to find someone who has gone missing. In this case a casual lover of hers. They trade quips and flirtations back and forth like ash filled balloons. I felt like I had been here before and as the film bumps along that nagging in my head stayed like a bad meal. At the end of the film, I realized why. It was based on a book I had read some years back. The Black Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black aka John Banville (the poster of the book is in the office at the end). Long enough ago that I can't recall if I liked it. There have been a number of post-Chandler Marlowe books that I have read and none of them really stuck with me. None felt authentic to Chandler and his character. So probably not. But Marlowe is one of my favorite characters in literature, so I am always ready to watch a film of him. At a minimum a reminder to a younger generation that he existed on the written page when noir was real and seeped in darkness, conniving women, cocktails, despair, poetry and metaphors. Marlowe brings on the karma like a mythical bird of justice. Digging through the garbage of human frailty and broken souls. At the end nothing has really changed. Marlowe has hopefully collected his paycheck of $25 a day and a few people have died along the way.



A few actors have gotten Marlowe right - Bogart in The Big Sleep and Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet. Robert Mitchum nearly in Farewell My Lovely and The Big Sleep. Definitely not Robert Montgomery in Lady in the Lake. George Montgomery in The Brasher Doubloon (based on The High Window) tried but was too lightweight. A few played Marlowe without using the name - George Sanders in The Falcon Takes Over and Lloyd Nolan in Time to Kill (as Mike Shayne). Here we have Liam Neeson bringing his serious heft to the role. In the last few years Neeson past middle age somehow managed to become an action star and is fairly good at it. He is just a good actor.



He was 70 when he made this which was perhaps too old for Marlowe but the character in the film doesn't pretend otherwise. He is scavenging for customers and after being kicked off the police force misses his pension. When that svelte blond tries to seduce him later in the film, he tells her that he is too old for her and makes it look like having sex would be a chore more than a pleasure. He wants to walk away from the case, but he has a secretary to pay and a small bungalow that is probably mortgaged but mainly because Marlowe never walks away. He sees everything out till the end. For $25 a day. It is his nature. He is a chess player. He has to know how it ends. As one of the many villains in the film tells him "I think you will keep looking for Peterson, client or no client".



Like Chandler's books, the plot is messy and befuddling. More characters than you want to keep track of. The blonde who walks into his office full of privilege is Clare (Diane Kruger), daughter of a famous movie actress. The actress played by Jessica Lange is seemingly a stand-in for Gloria Swanson and she wants to keep tabs on her daughter, Marlowe and the man he is looking for. The man who is supposed to be dead - his head squashed by a car tire like a pumpkin the day after Halloween. Everyone is looking for him; no one thinks he is really dead.



The high-end club owner (Danny Huston) who drips charming acid and a club where anything goes, the career crime boss (Alan Cumming) who says he prefers the rear entrance, a few Mexicans from Tijuana who have sharper blades than a face can take, the missing man's sister (Daniela Melchior) and the next Ambassador to England - a stand in for Joseph Kennedy. The usual drugs, blackmail, lies, beatings and murder and Marlowe has to unravel it and maybe cover it up. It is an orgy of vipers. Colin Meany shows up as Bernie Ohls - the cop that Marlowe can go to in the books. A standout is Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, the chauffer whose role gets much larger than initially expected. The film plods a bit, the dialogue sounds false at times, a little muddled but I thought it was fairly good. Neeson takes up good space as he always does and following him around on a case is easy to take. Neil Jordan directs and the film's period look is flush and spot on. Still, I miss character actors like Elisha Cook Jr. and Mike Mazurki but those days are gone and no one can replace them.