Marlowe (2023)

Directed by Neil Jordan. Starring Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, Jessica Lange, Danny Huston, Ian Hart, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Alan Cumming, Colm Meaney, François Arnaud, Seána Kerslake, Daniela Melchior. [R]

The combined talents of Neil Jordan and William Monahan (plus the reunion of Rob Roy & Mary MacGregor) for a Philip Marlowe mystery should have been a can’t-miss, but miss it does, and not because it’s based on a John Banville story instead of a Raymond Chandler classic. Marlowe (Neeson) is hired by an heiress (Kruger) to find her missing lover, and he doesn’t call it a day after the man apparently turns up dead, and the trail leads him to shady individuals like club owner Huston and drug kingpin Cumming. Not quite as bad as the last handful of Neeson’s creaky old man action movies, but everything is flat: the secondhand production details, the lighting, the colors, the trope-heavy plotting, the softboiled dialogue, the archetypal characterizations and form-fitting performances. Maybe Jordan and company thought they could spice things up with a little rough violence and profanity, but it’s all gratuitous. The Banville book in question, for those who are interested, is “The Black-Eyed Blonde”.

41/100