Philip Marlowe, the original hard-boiled detective from Los Angeles, staged a surprise return in Irish writer John Banville’s 2014 novel The Black-Eyed Blonde, a well-received sequel authorized by the Raymond Chandler estate. Adapted for the screen by William Monahan (The Departed, Body of Lies), Neil Jordan’s Marlowe is an enjoyable period noir, but one that can’t get past its derivative origins. Forget The Long Goodbye or Farewell My Lovely; Jordan and his knowing cast play the story for winking, gentle fun and the warm sensation of a bedtime story that has been read many times before.
The main attraction is the eponymous wisecracking detective who gets by on alcohol (but not much in this film) and wits alone. He’s older now but no less fascinating in Liam Neeson’s charming, markedly Irish incarnation. Perhaps the ethnic touches are meant to celebrate the actor’s reunion with Jordan, as this is the first time they’ve worked together since Michael Collins gave the star’s career a major boost in 1996. In any case, the jokes about James Joyce, County Clare and a mention of Marlowe fighting in the Royal Irish Rifles during the war sit oddly with what one knows about the P.I.
Marlowe is also memorable as the 100th film in Neeson’s long and successful career, and its period setting and relatively undemanding plot throw him a softball that he hits with effortless grace, while arch co-stars Diane Kruger as a millionaire heiress and Jessica Lange as her movie-star mother add a pungent, sassy female presence for him to play against. Neeson joins the score of actors who have embodied Chandler’s fictional creation, from James Caan and Robert Mitchum to Elliot Gould (even Danny Glover played Marlowe in a TV episode directed by Agnieszka Holland.) Visually, perhaps the reference for Neeson’s poker-faced private eye wrapped in a trench coat and concealing hat brim is Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep; both command the natural gravitas that makes fist fights and grimacing superfluous.
The year is 1939 and the place Bay City, where a striking platinum blonde walks into Marlowe’s office and teases him with word games (one of the film’s repeated eccentricities, perhaps meant as a substitute for the gumshoe’s beloved chess?) Mrs. Clare Cavendish (Kruger) proceeds to hire him to find out what happened to her lover Nico Peterson, the debonair prop master at a film studio and part-time agent. The first thing Marlowe learns from his cop crony Joe (Ian Hart) is that Peterson is dead, the victim of a hit-and-run in front of the posh Corbata Club, an exclusive joint offering liquor and massages to the filthy rich. Club manager Floyd Hanson (a wonderfully scary Danny Huston) has identified the body and so has the dead man’s sister. So how come Clare just saw him driving his car filled with movie props down the street?
There is also Colm Meany padding around as Marlowe’s fellow shamus and buddy Bernie Ohls, but he has no great impact on the story. Another character who adds more color than suspense to the plot is Clare’s glamorous, wealthy mom Dorothy Quincannon (Lange), a has-been from the silent screen but still able to hold her own with her daughter when a man is in the room. Both these free spirits (call them ex-femmes fatales) nod to the independent, self-propelling woman of today, and both make a credible play for Marlowe’s affection, with predictable results from the gallant Irishman.
The plot takes a darker turn when Lou Hendricks (Alan Cumming) appears on the scene, a suave gangster with a dangerous Southern accent and a mountainous chauffeur-bodyguard (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) who waylays Marlowe. It becomes likely that a Mexican connection and drug trafficking have something to do with Peterson’s disappearance and that of his sister. Unable to stop multiple tragedies from unfolding, the detective becomes a witness to the selfishness, greed and corruption all around him without letting it so much as singe his coattails.
With virtually all the violence, torture and fisticuffs occurring offscreen, it’s a pleasure to finally watch two brief but well-filmed action scenes towards the end of the film, both owing a great deal to the atmospheric movie-fantasy atmosphere created by D.P. Xavi Gimenez’s cinematography and John Beard’s imaginative Hollywood-inspired sets. In the first Marlowe stumbles onto an underground torture chamber where information is sought by any means; the other involves a scene of book-burning that — again a little oddly — references a Third Reich set on the lot.
Director: Neil Jordan
Screenplay: William Monahan, Neil Jordan based on a novel by John Banville
Cast: Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, Jessica Lange, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Ian Hart, Colm Meaney, Danny Huston, Alan Cumming
Producers: Mark Fasano, Patrick Hibler, Billy Hines, Philip Kim, Gary Levinsohn, Alan Moloney
Cinematography: Xavi Gimenez
Editing: Mick Mahon
Production design: John Beard
Art director: Mani Martinez
Costume design: Betsy Heimann
Music: David Holmes
Sound: Steve Fanagan, Jordi Cirbian
Production companies: Parallel Film Productions (Ireland), Hills Productions (Spain), Davis-Films (France)
World Sales: Storyboad Media (U.S.)
Venue: San Sebastian Film Festival Film Festival (Out of competition)
In English
110 minutes
