COMING SOON
Shia cheek of own life story – but it works
MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN (15) EDWARD Norton’s passion project has a thumping score, a great cast, gorgeous cinematography and a clever premise.
It is just a shame the actor-turned-writer-anddirector couldn’t tie the pieces together with a strong story – although the set-up is certainly promising enough.
Jonathan Lethem’s 1999 novel, which Norton has been trying to bring to the screen almost from the day it was published, was set in that decade but the jazzy soundtrack and the smoky feel takes us to 1950s New York.
There we find lonely gumshoe Lionel Essrog (Norton) shadowing his boss Frank Minna (Bruce Willis) to a meeting in an apartment building.
Every private eye needs a quirk, and Lionel has two – a photographic memory and Tourette’s syndrome, which has burdened him with uncontrollable twitches and sudden verbal outbursts.
Just before a group of sinister chaps in sharp suits roll up, Lionel calls the apartment from a phone box across the street and Frank lays down the receiver so his favourite employee can listen in.
When Frank is then shot dead following a mysterious argument,
Lionel has memorised a string of names and places.
These cryptic clues lead him to a disgruntled architect (Willem Dafoe), a corrupt politician (Alex Baldwin), Gugu MbathaRaw’s activist lawyer and Michael K Williams’ jazz trumpeter.
Sadly, this is the only time Lionel’s memory comes into play. His
Tourette’s doesn’t feature as heavily as you expect, either. His condition could, like Columbo’s dirty rain coat, lead criminals to fatally under-estimate him.
It could also give viewers access to what he is thinking, creating suspense and occasional moments comedy.
There’s a scene where the poor soul blows his hard-bitten credentials by shouting “milk t**s!” at the busty waitress who is frothing his coffee.
But he mostly keeps it under wraps as the conspiracy begins to unravel.
Precisely what is unravelling of black isn’t always apparent. This a very murky story and not all the scenes move it on.
Lionel struggles to live up to his billing as New York’s smartest detective.
After its promising opening scenes, Norton’s near two-and-a-halfhour labour of love becomes a bit of a chore.
NEXT WEEK: Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan back are in the jungle in body swap adventure sequel Jumanji: The Next Level. THE WEEK AFTER: The Resistance the First and Order prepare for a final showdown in Star Wars: The
Rise Of Skywalker, the final instalment of the sequel trilogy.
HONEY BOY (15) ★★★★
AFTER getting arrested in July 2017, Transformers star Shia LaBeouf went into rehab, where he was encouraged to write about his childhood.
LaBeouf turned his scribblings into a screenplay, cast himself as his own father and then got his director friend Alma Har’el to turn it into a feature film.
But the film isn’t as self-indulgent as it sounds.
After seeing actor Otis (Lucas Hedges) sent to rehab, we flashback to follow a 12-year-old child star (Noah Jupe) who is living with his angry, alcoholic dad in a crummy motel while shooting a sitcom.
With his mother absent, Otis has made his father his official chaperone.
LaBeouf’s performance is raw and horribly convincing and Jupe is heart-breaking as the trusting child who realises the only way to keep his wayward father by his side is to put him on the payroll.