Motherless Brooklyn

[StevePulaski]

Motherless Brooklyn (2019)
Directed by: Edward Norton

Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Edward Norton in Motherless Brooklyn.

Rating: ★★★

The sad fact of passion projects — especially those that spend years in the purgatorial space of cinema known as "development hell — is that most wind up being overlong and overstuffed despite having no shortage of ambition. As great as it was, Martin Scorsese's long-in-the-works religious epic Silence fit the bill, and others such as Warren Beatty's Rules Don't Apply and John Travolta's Battlefield Earth really crumbled under the weight of their own importance, which just kept swelling with each passing year they were still unproduced.

As far as passion projects that have been in limbo for the better part of two decades are concerned, Edward Norton's Motherless Brooklyn fares better than Beatty's. It is indicative of many rewrites, however, given a meandering second act that precedes a patchy third. Being the best of the aforementioned lot is no sorry consolation prize, seeing as the film still drew me in with its leisurely paced mystery, which distinguishes it in a genre filled with frantic potboilers. In the golden age of television in which we are presently living, Motherless Brooklyn probably would've made a gripping six-to-eight episode miniseries in the vein of Boardwalk Empire.

As a standalone feature that Norton — serving as director, writer, lead actor, and producer — undoubtedly slaved over since he acquired the rights to Jonathan Lethem's novel in 1999, it's still not a half bad picture.

Beginning the way most noirs, classic or neo, often do, it drops us into a car where 1950s New York City detectives Lionel Essrog (Norton) and Gilbert Coney (Ethan Suplee) anxiously monitor their superior Frank Minna (Bruce Willis) as he leads the charge on a new case. Like a tactician, Norton paints a lot in these opening minutes. We see that Lionel has Tourette syndrome, but his mind is like a Honeywell safe insofar that he can remember conversations and instructions better than anyone Frank knows — part of the reason the veteran sleuth has served as his mentor for years. Predictably, Frank's smooth-talking fails him when dealing with potential new clients, and he's gunned down leaving his entire mom-and-pop detective operation to be manned by his wife (Leslie Mann). The rest of the office (Bobby Cannavale, Dallas Roberts) is in the same boat as Lionel and Gilbert in being clueless as to who the men who shot Frank are and what his connection to them was about.

The story focuses on Lionel's attempt to avenge Frank's death, which involves getting wrapped up in a political scandal involving gentrification and personal politics for which he wasn't prepared. In the second act, he meets Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who finally gets a role she can make her own), a Harlem-based lawyer who is attempting to save her neighborhood of working class folks in brownstone apartments from being eviscerated by cutthroat politicians like Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin). Lionel and Laura cross paths at a popular Harlem jazz club, The King Rooster, where his investigative works takes him after he's forced to play dress-up as a reporter to get closer to the people who might've whacked his mentor.

Reiterating that description made me again realize why Motherless Brooklyn can be such a task to follow. The first 45 minutes are plenty engrossing as the film lets us linger in 1950s Brooklyn and see it as a lived-in world; a melting pot of cultures where people are more alike than they appear. Norton's portrayal of a man troubled by ticks and twitches he cannot control is an effective one because it's never played for laughs and reminds us just how fiercely capable he is as a man accustomed to playing everyday heroes and villains of many backgrounds. Norton's script moves at Lionel's pace, methodically but capably, until Laura and Randolph enter. Too many motivations and monologues begin to cloud what began as a clear-cut mystery despite offering the human impact of gentrification that frequently gets sidelined in favor of a reckless game of political number-crunching.

Nevertheless, Motherless Brooklyn provides a platform for a stable of fine performances to shine. Mbatha-Raw loans a thoughtfulness to Laura that we see blossom in contentious town-hall meetings and private-time with Lionel, Cannavale exudes a slimy yet experienced exterior to his street-smart detective role, and Baldwin was born to play a pissed off politician and is only lacking a "F*** you, that's my name!"-esque line to give this role everlasting fame. Even Willem Dafoe makes a handful of appearances in a role that's more than a glorified cameo.

There's also gorgeous attention-to-detail in the film's cool teal and gray cinematography, the lovely work of Dick Pope, who similarly made The Illusionist and Mr. Turner so visually arresting. Pope's ambiance further sells the old-fashioned decor of Motherless Brooklyn, which is capped off by tailored garments and era-appropriate fashion that all loan themselves to an attractive presentation. Daniel Pemberton's jazz-infused score ties together what is ultimately a pleasant film to experience despite the progressively lofty subject matter. Where the details lack lie in the fine-tuning of the bloated screenplay, which would rather outline the point-A-to-Z interworkings of Randolph's master-plan than perhaps pencil in some backstory as to why Frank meant so much to Lionel for him to go through all this hoopla.

All of the above coupled with Norton's careful pacing do the heavy-lifting in a film slightly marred by too many ideas and an unsatisfying payoff.

Starring: Edward Norton, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Alec Baldwin, Bruce Willis, Bobby Cannavale, Willem Dafoe, Ethan Suplee, Dallas Roberts, and Leslie Mann. Directed by: Edward Norton.