Marlowe

2022 Open Road Films

Rated: R

Length: 1 hr 49min

Crime ~ Mystery ~ Thriller

Starring: Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, and Jessica Lange.

“Los Angeles, a city of angels, more like the city of dirty little secrets. People pay me to look into the activities of it’s finest citizens. I’m a private detective. The name is Phillip Marlowe.”

Liam Neeson stars as Phillip Marlowe, a Private Investigator in Los Angeles, California in October 1939. A woman named Clare Cavendish (Diane Kruger) hires Marlowe to find out what happened to her ex-lover Nico Peterson. Jessica Lange plays Dorothy Quincannon, a Hollywood actress, an Oil baron Heiress and Clare’s mother. Marlowe quickly discovers that Peterson is allegedly dead after falling down drunk in front of a passing car.

Marlowe then visits Claire Cavendish to tell her the news of his demise but she swears she just saw him in Tijuana. Frustrated at Claire not being forthcoming with the information he leaves to follow more leads. And one lead leads to another and another. The further we go into the movie the murkier the story and plot seem to get. It’s hard to figure out what is really going on in this movie.

This film is loosely based on the Raymond Chandler character Philip Marlowe and The Black-Eyed Blonde, a 2014 Novel by John Banville. Humphrey Bogart starred as Phillip Marlowe in the 1946 movie The Big Sleep and there have been a lot of tv shows and movies with the Phillip Marlowe character thru the decades. I also discovered this is Liam Neeson’s 100th film.

I liked the old black and white Film noir movies. The slang and the wiseguy cracks. Marlowe seems to imitate those old movies on the surface but lacks any depth. It’s nice to see Liam Neeson attempting a different role than the hardcore vigilante roles we are used to seeing him in. But the dialogue fell flat for me. It was pretty slow watching.