The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
‘MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN’
Despite talented cast and intriguing characters, Norton’s detective movie falls flat
“Motherless Brooklyn” begins with Edward Norton’s Lionel Essrog telling us, calmly and through narration, that there is something wrong with him. ¶ “I got threads in my head!” ¶ the character soon shouts repeatedly as he battles with a loose thread at the end of his sleeve, his body jerking much of the time, as well. ¶ “And I twitch and shout a lot,” the narration continues. ¶ Yes, we got that.
“Motherless Brooklyn,” a dense, noir-soaked detective story, is Norton’s baby. He directed, wrote, produced and, obviously, stars in this mixed-bag adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s 1999 novel of the same name.
It’s impossible without having read it to say if this is true of the novel — and know that the book won at least two noteworthy awards for fiction — but in the film, Lionel’s condition feels gimmicky.
While the character doesn’t have a name for his affliction, he clearly is living with Tourette syndrome, a disorder characters by repetitive movements and unwanted sounds, often in the form of offensive words and phrases. Lionel regularly says things to people who don’t know him that require both an apology and an explanation.
He obviously also has obsessive-compulsive disorder, often needing to touch a person three times in the same spot or, once, repeatedly blowing out a match he has lit for a woman.
These are very real issues, of course, and that its protagonist has them helps “Motherless Brooklyn” stand out from the crime-fiction pack. However, they seem to come and go as Norton needs for the story to ebb and flow — or merely be there for the occasional laugh — which can be a little frustrating.
Also frustrating is that, with a running time well over two hours, “Motherless Brooklyn” overstays its welcome. True, like many a detective story, “Motherless Brooklyn” is complex and has many moving parts, but this one loses momentum in its second half.
All said, it never completely loses the viewer, the film remaining relatively engaging thanks to Norton mostly worthwhile performance, as well as a supporting cast composed largely of heavy hitters.
In bringing “Motherless Brooklyn” to the screen, Norton ditched the novel’s contemporary setting in favor of the late 1950s, flavoring his film with the clothes, cars and boozy-and-smoky jazz clubs of the day. It feels as though he wanted to make a cold-New York version of 1997’s warmer-feeling “L.A. Confidential” — an admirable goal even if his work falls well short of that excellent film, also set in the ‘50s.
As the movie begins, Lionel is one of four detectives working under private investigator Frank Minna (Bruce Willis). While one colleague, Bobby Cannavalle’s Tony Vermonte, sometimes calls Lionel “Freakshow,” Frank calls him “Brooklyn” — or “Motherless Brooklyn,” as Lionel grew up mainly in a Catholic orphanage in the New York borough.
Because Frank was always good to him, Lionel wants to figure out who is responsible for Frank’s murder after a meeting gone wrong in the first act of “Motherless Brooklyn.” (It was Lionel’s job to listen to the goings on in the meeting from afar — while he has his afflictions, he is tremendously smart and has a near-perfect memory — but when Frank’s rendezvous with shadowy figures took a turn, Lionel was unable to help him in time.)
While Tony focuses his efforts of taking over the agency with the blessing of Frank’s widow, Julia (a seldom-seen Leslie Mann), Lionel sets about following a trail of clues that include someone named Horowitz, a couple of music clubs and a “colored” woman who proves to be Gugu MbathaRaw’s beautiful, corruption-fighting Laura Rose.
As the mystery deepens, Lionel grows increasingly close to Laura — and fears for her safety — and is pulled into the massive orbit of New York City power player Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin).
As we meet Moses — whom Norton based in part on Robert Moses, a real New York developer and power wielder from the mid-1900s — he is accepting two city commissioner positions from the newly sworn-in mayor while also refusing to shake the hand of his new boss. In a subsequent scene, we watch Moses bully the mayor for a third such position, the one he truly covets. It’s apparent who’s really in charge at city hall.
Among the myriad other folks Lionel encounters are a mysterious pot-stirrer (an overdoing-it Willem Dafoe) and a trumpeter portrayed by the always enjoyable Michael K. Williams (“The Wire,” “Boardwalk
Empire”).
Speaking of music, it does not go unnoticed in “Motherless Brooklyn.” A memorable scene sees Lionel and Laura slow dance to some jazz in one of those gin-soaked clubs, and the faster songs stimulate Lionel’s mind in a more positive way than some other sounds. Plus, the increasingly jazzy score by Daniel Pemberton (“Steve Jobs,” “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) and an original song by Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke are interesting almost to the point of distraction.
Again, it benefits “Motherless Brooklyn” to have this parade of familiar faces, with Willis (“Glass”) providing some early punch and Baldwin (“Mission: Impossible — Fallout”) mostly succeeding in channeling his memorable performance from 1992’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” in a lategame scene with Norton.
Norton (“Primal Fear,” “Collateral Beauty”), meanwhile, enjoys a decent chemistry with MbathaRaw (“Concussion”), and he handles his tricky role fairly nicely.
He’s less successful as filmmaker, however. In his first directorial effort since 2000’s “Keeping the Faith,” Norton would have been wise to tighten things up a bit. Plus, he offers up an odd tonal shift, “Motherless Brooklyn” moving from rapid-fire dialogue in its first half to moody jazz vibes in its second. It bleeds energy as it meanders.
It’s tempting to give “Motherless Brooklyn” the most tepid of recommendations — and if a detective story is your thing, by all means check it out — but it falls too short of its potential.