Motherless Brooklyn
starring Edward Norton, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Carnavale, Cherry Jones, Ethan Suplee, Bruce Willis, Willem Dafoe and Alec Baldwin
written and directed by Edward Norton
Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦
Motherless Brooklyn is a film noir crime story set in 1950s New York, based on the novel of the same name by Jonathan Lethem (1999, Doubleday). I thought it was a great film, but it is considered a box office bomb because it failed to recoup its production cost during its theater release in 2019. I thought it was a fantastic film, though. I loved the visual recreation of the period and the noir atmosphere.
The story features a private detective, Lionel Essrog (Edward Norton) who works for Frank Minna (Bruce Willis). Lionel works at a detective agency alongside Gilbert Coney, Danny Fantl, and Tony Vermonte. Frank rescued them as children from an abusive orphanage. Nicknamed "Motherless Brooklyn", Lionel - who suffers from Tourette Syndrome - is the brightest of the group, and he is the one who takes the lead investigating Frank’s murder. Because of his Tourette’s, Lionel is habitually under-estimated, marginalized and bullied. Frank was working on a secret case, so back-tracking the clues, making sense of them and putting the puzzle together occupies the entire film. Luckily, Lionel has a photographic memory and detailed recall of information, for which he was Frank’s most trusted staff.
It turns out that Frank was investigating corruption in the NYC government. Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin), a commissioner of several development authorities in the city government, is steeped in corruption. He is forcing minorities (mostly African Americans) out of their neighborhoods, then redeveloping the land into rich properties, completely disregarding his obligations to fairly reimburse the displaced residents and to help relocate them, all the while lining his own pockets. Naturally, Randolph thinks he is bettering the city the way that tyrants always think they are working for the greater good. Frank Minna learned of the depth of city corruption through the discovery of Randolph’s illegitimate black daughter, Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), living above a jazz club in Harlem. What’s a 1950s film noir crime story without a Harlem jazz club? You gotta have one of those.