Motherless Brooklyn

Well I think he was right to change the time period to 1950’s Noir, but at the same time, after the character Frank Minna (Bruce Willis) smirks his way to an early demise and Lionel (Edward Norton) starts his investigation, it soon becomes one of those “Maltese Falcon”/”Chinatown” type story that I tend to get bored following …

Edward Norton is the writer/director/lead of #MotherlessBrooklyn, a passion project that took him 20 years to get to the screen, based on a 1999 novel by Jonathan Lethem. The story centers around solving the murder of Frank Minna, a private dick/hustler with a team of 4 misfit associates. His most loyal misfit is Lionel Essrog (Norton) who’s hell bent in figuring out what happened partly because his compulsive disorder manifesting in Tourette syndrome won’t let his head rest; but mainly cause Minna accepted him as a weird, fellow orphan when they were kids, taking him in under his wing looking out for him ever since, so he feels he owes him.

There’s a B plot that takes a look at early gentrification in Brooklyn, involving a pretty, black female, Laura (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and Alec Baldwin‘s character is based on a real life white tycoon of the time period bent on a “Manefest Destiny” of sorts, involving building bridges. From here the story gets a bit murky, but the sets look credible and the overall production value very good. Loved the lighting behind the horn player at the jazz club. And in terms of noir romance, there’s a sweet chemistry between Norton & Mbatha-Raw; it’s nice how her touch calms his Tourette’s to a degree.

Still, on the whole, I didn’t love “Motherless Brooklyn”, although there’s stuff here to warrant some nominations in the swiftly approaching awards season.

T&T @LAMB rating: 3 outta 5