Liam Neeson Revives a Movie Icon—But Doesn’t Do Him Justice

Liam Neeson follows in the footsteps of Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, and Elliott Gould (among others) in Marlowe (which hits theaters Feb. 15), playing Raymond Chandler’s iconic SoCal private eye in a mystery rife with Hollywood glamor, underworld murder, and nefarious conspiracies most foul. Unfortunately, while the star adequately acquits himself, Neil Jordan’s throwback noir is a cover song that knows all the notes but can’t capture its predecessor’s spirit. It’s all surface, no soul.

Neeson’s Philip Marlowe doesn’t have much of a gruff, jaded edge; instead, the headliner leans into the character’s gallant side, which helps modestly differentiate his turn from those that came before.

It’s a passable conception of the detective, if one that feels too bland by half—as well as generic, as evidenced by the fact that it requires Neeson to resort to his familiar action-hero routine by punching out various henchmen. At least as often as not, this Marlowe’s world-weariness comes across as lethargy, such that when he says, “I’m getting too old for this,” it’s hard not to hear the cliché as less an articulation of the character’s disillusionment than an expression of the actor’s attitude toward such material.

Still, though he never cuts a truly distinguishing figure as Chandler’s famous hero, Neeson holds his own in Marlowe, which director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, The Butcher Boy) fashions as an overly manicured period piece. Eschewing classic noir’s monochrome, Jordan creates heightened visual contrast by balancing inky blacks and warm yellows. Venetian shadows are a recurring feature, as are shots of Marlowe seen through slatted gates and constricting window panes.

Multiple mirror images of characters, as well as sharp diagonal lines, are also prime components of Jordan’s old-school aesthetics, as is David Holmes’ horn-heavy score. As far as replications go, it’s a superficial success, yet there’s nonetheless something so meticulous and studied about the director’s approach that it renders the action a self-conscious and airless facsimile.

Set in 1939 Los Angeles but shot in Spain, Marlowe boasts an uneasy dissonance that might have worked in its favor—heightening its mood of dangerous, romantic dreaminess—if the film weren’t so committed to going through the literal noir motions.

Based on John Banville’s 2014 novel The Black-Eyed Blonde rather than a Chandler original, its story is a compendium of customary gumshoe elements, beginning with Chandler being visited in his office by fetching blonde socialite Clare Cavendish (Diane Kruger), who has a mission for him: find her lover Nico Peterson (François Arnaud). That task doesn’t prove too difficult for Marlowe, who almost immediately discovers that Nico is dead and cremated, the victim of a fatal hit-and-run outside the Corbata Club, an enclave of luxury and leisure for the city’s wealthy elite.

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There’d be no movie if this were an open-and-shut case, however, and Marlowe soon deduces that something strange is afoot, thanks to Clare’s claim that she saw Nico in Mexico shortly after his supposed demise. Additional snooping leads Marlow from one snake to another, be it the Corbata Club’s manager Floyd Hanson (Danny Huston), who carries himself with the suave cockiness of a man shielded by money and privilege, or Nico’s sister Lynn (Daniela Melchior), who believes her brother to be dead (she apparently even identified him at the morgue) and is preyed upon by hoods visiting from Mexico. The high and the low collide in Marlowe, forcing the detective to untangle a knot of allegiances that leads him back, invariably, to the movie industry itself.

Clare, it turns out, is the daughter of Dorothy (Jessica Lange), a wealthy and somewhat disreputable former starlet whose husband, the Ambassador (Mitchell Mullen), purchased Pacific Pictures studio for her. Familial rivalries of a financial and sexual sort factor into this stew, as do criminal shenanigans concerning Lou Hendricks (Alan Cumming), a shady drug dealer who makes references to his own homosexuality and whose chauffeur Cedric (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) is a heavy with a Tommy gun.

Together, these characters strive to transform the film into a typically convoluted Chandler saga. The effort, unfortunately, is largely for naught. Marlowe muddies the waters in ways that are less intriguing than indolent, and moreover, it’s not nearly as confusing as it should be; save for a couple of minor diversions, the tale told here is depressingly straightforward.

Between Kruger and Lange’s platinum ’dos, Neeson’s fedora, and the shiny old-school cars that everyone drives, Marlowe certainly looks the part. William Monahan’s script, on the other hand, doesn’t sound it. Ham-fisted dialogue like, “I’m just an ordinary Joe, trying to earn a buck and stay out of jail” clangs stridently against the expertly recreated interior décor and palm tree-dappled exterior locations, turning the proceedings into an exercise in affectation.

Only Huston seems comfortable spewing his malevolent lines, and that speaks more to his preternatural gift for stately wickedness than to the screenplay. Worse, when it’s not actively trying to echo the hard-bitten cadences and ornate turns of phrase of the past, it bogs down in clumsy truisms and exposition.

References to Hitchcock and nods to the imminent Nazi threat help color in the corners of Marlowe, yet such real-world details are at odds with the film’s persistent artificiality. One wishes Jordan would dive headfirst into illusory terrain, especially since his plot is partially about Hollywood deception and treachery. As it stands, though, everything is less than it initially appears, and certainly far from beguiling.

Populated by archetypes shuffling their way through a funhouse variation of a Siodmak, Lang, or Hawkes affair, it lacks noir’s unnerving jaggedness, sultry sumptuousness, and grim fatalism, all of which is replaced by rigorous production detail and lots of posing and overdoing-it by its cast.

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That Marlowe occasionally taps into an authentic hardboiled vein—as when Marlowe is informed that a suspect has been found, and “she’ll wait ‘till we get there”—just makes its many swings and misses all the more frustrating. Absent an engrossing whodunit, a bitter violent streak or a legitimate erotic charge, it’s just an approximation of the numerous better movies fans of the genre should spend their time watching.

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