Review: Motherless Brooklyn

Previously reviewed as part of our TIFF 2019 coverage. 

PLOT: A private detective (Edward Norton) with Tourette’s Syndrome, working in 1950’s New York, tries to solve his late mentor’s murder and uncovers a vast conspiracy involving a prominent citizen (Alec Baldwin).

REVIEW: MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN has long been a passion project for Edward Norton who, in addition to starring, also directed and wrote the screenplay for this adaptation, which takes Jonathan Lethem’s 1999 novel and changes the setting to the 1950s. Nodding its fedora at some of New York City’s very real history, Norton’s made a dark, character-driven noir that’s beautifully acted and made, but also dense and overlong, with a punishing running time that could have easily been cut down.

Norton’s certainly crafted a fine role for himself as Lionel Essrog, our Tourette’s afflicted, hero. Being the fifties, Essrog doesn’t have a name for the condition that causes him to have uncontrollable tics and ramblings. Although some may say this element distracts from the plot, the Tourette’s stuff is where the film fares best. Norton is magnetic to watch in the way that he only is when he’s acting in something he cares about, and is a tribute to his skill that after only a few minutes you see beyond Essrog’s surface level tics and appreciate him for his strengths instead.

These strengths include peerless detective work, with him able to get lots of people talking despite his affliction and ingratiate himself with the right people, including Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a young civil rights activist who holds the key to why his mentor was murdered. Said mentor is played by Bruce Willis, in a shockingly small role despite his star billing, with him dead within the first five minutes of the film (a death that’s in all the trailers and the entire movie hinges on), and it’s a small part that doesn’t have the impact it maybe should have had considering how it propels the narrative.

The ensemble cast is strong here, with Willem Dafoe in a rare sympathetic role as a gone-to-seed city planner with too much information, while Alec Baldwin has a juicy part as the big baddie. His character, Moses Randolph, is based on Robert Moses, the real-life figure responsible for many of the bridges built in New York, a controversial guy to be sure. Here, he’s portrayed as a virulent racist, keen on destroying as many low-income neighborhoods as he can to make room for his bridges, and Baldwin plays him to the hilt. While everyone nowadays knows him mostly for his comic roles, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN reaffirms his heft as a dramatic actor and is his best role in a while. Other keys roles are played by folks like Michael K. Williams, Dallas Roberts and Bobby Cannavale – a pretty amazing cast, with the always excelletn Raw being the standout. Here warmth and chemistry with Norton makes the romantic aspect of the plot work better than it should.

Yet, for all the strengths as far as the acting goes, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN suffers from the fact that it’s so slow-paced and talky. Norton’s straightforwardly directs this, not getting in the way of the performances, but the result is likely too dry for audiences and not exceptional enough for the academy. A surer hand with some real style was needed to put this across, although the writing is top-notch, while the score by Daniel Pemberton, which includes a new Thom Yorke song as a recurring motif, is effective. It’s also apparently one of the most geographically accurate New York movies ever made, although that fact will be lost on a non-NYC audience.

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN would have likely fared a lot better had Norton taken a page from the noir classics he evokes, and gone for a jauntier pace (it’s worth noting the best noirs are all under 100 minutes- many of them significantly so). The film is jam-packed with detail, but it all adds up to a murky whole and a result that’s too often dull despite Norton’s terrific performance in the lead. Overall, it's truly a mixed bag, although it definitely has its strengths.