Motherless Brooklyn (2019)

It's a difficult task to pace a noir for a modern audience, and you can feel the two and a half hour runtime. The story is interesting and the parallels to America in the present day are welcomed, but there isn't enough tonal balance to contrast all the shadowy moodiness. The plot is on the more convoluted side, and you'd imagine that with it being a story about following a trail of clues, 'Motherless Brooklyn' would reward repeat viewings - but I'm not sure I would optionally sit through all of it again. There is nothing inherently wrong with this film, bar some odd edits and framing choices, and Norton tackles the material fairly well, creating a great tribute to the noir era of filmmaking. It sometimes treads the line of parody rather than homage, but for anyone in the mood for crime mystery in the vein of 'Chinatown' or 'L.A. Confidential', this will absolutely hit the spot.
- Joel Kalkopf
Read Joel's full article...
https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-motherless-brooklyn-a-neo-noir-set-in-1950s-new-york

Motherless Brooklyn’s lead performance recalls two previous Ed Norton outings: Primal Fear and The Score. In the latter two, Norton plays, respectively, a cold-blooded killer posing as a stuttering altar boy, and a thief posing as a mentally-challenged janitor; in the former, he plays Lionel Essrog, a private investigator with Tourette’s syndrome.
The key difference is that Lionel really does have Tourette’s and isn’t just pretending. In Primal Fear and The Score there is a performance-within-a-performance, with the character pulling a Sun Tzu and appearing weak when he’s strong in order to achieve an ulterior goal. Conversely, there is no means-to-an-end scenario in Motherless Brooklyn; the protagonist’s handicap is genuine, and while Norton does this medical condition justice like only he can, it sadly turns out to be a hindrance not only for the character, but also the actor, the movie, and even the audience.
There is enough material here for two films, and Norton, who writes, produces, and directs, neglects to edit; perhaps he should have been as involved in his own movie’s cutting process as he was in American History X’s, instead of leaving the responsibility to the undistinguished Joe Klotz. The first film follows an individual with Tourette’s as he juggles his disorder, his job, and his personal relationships. The second, which doesn’t need the Tourette’s angle, involves a murder mystery that takes us from Harlem’s jazz clubs to Brooklyn’s slums to the drawing rooms of the rich and powerful. Norton would have done well to focus on the first story; first, because of his performance, which strikes a prodigious balance between tactful and funny. And second, because Tourette isn’t the film’s only malady; the plot, such as it is, is a dull intrigue concerning urban renewal and housing relocation – and outside an 80s family comedy wherein the gang must save the old people’s home from being torn down to make room for a parking lot, it is near impossible to take an urban planner seriously as a credible villain, even if he’s played by Alec Baldwin; here’s one turd that not even he can polish.
Baldwin is not the only talented performer whose talent goes to waste here, though. Ethan Suplee, Dallas Roberts, and Leslie Mann show up to push the plot forward, hang around for a couple more scenes, and then disappear without a trace; all of their characters, especially Mann’s, could have been replaced with a little timely exposition. At least Bruce Willis has the decency to die after setting the events of the movie in motion.
Motherless Brooklyn shows much more ambition than Norton’s previous directorial credit, which was also his debut: the romantic comedy Keeping the Faith. That’s the good news. The not-so- good news is that he remains a greater actor than he is a director and scriptwriter. His performance here is flawless, but that doesn’t change the fact that his character has been overwritten.
Overall, the film would be neither better nor worse with or without the whole Tourette’s syndrome stuff, and that leaves us with a feature-length picture where the length has gotten out of hand, and that only rises above mediocrity during Willem Dafoe’s all-too-brief interventions. Unlike Norton, Dafoe is able to convey mental instability more subtly; not with a stutter but with a tone of voice, not in the way he looks but in the way he looks at others. He slow-burns until he reaches the boiling point, and when he does it’s beautiful and terrifying at the same time. His is the most well-rounded character in the movie, and that’s likely more Dafoe’s doing than Norton’s.