Marlowe review: Liam Neeson’s particular set of skills can’t rescue this noir misfire
In his 100th film, Neeson plays classic detective Philip Marlowe alongside Jessica Lange and Diane Kruger
Film Reviews Liam Neeson
The dark and violent world of Raymond Chandler’s durable hard-boiled private detective Philip Marlowe brings many descriptors to mind. Tough. Two-fisted. Cynical. “Elegant” comes far down that list. But a small elegance, expressed in decent production values, terse pacing and long lateral camera takes, is the main thing director Neil Jordan has to offer in the mostly misguided Marlowe, the latest of perhaps too many attempts to pour the old wine of Chandler’s fiction into new bottles, and then sell the resulting concoction as vintage.
Marlowe is an odd duck of a movie. It features recognizable genre contours, including treacherous blondes; thrust-and-parry dialogue that plays as sexual flirtation even when it’s straight exposition; and Philip Marlowe getting stomped on and (nearly) drugged. It’s also very “meta.” But at this point, so are Marvel movies; self-reflexivity might be the most “old school thing” Marlowe has to offer.
This is neo-noir written by chatbot, or an Edward Hopper painting reimagined by DALL-E 2. Here, Spain doubles wobbly for Los Angeles, and a 70-year-old Liam Neeson assays a character who is 38 in the original fictions. The bleariness of it all makes for a hazy memory of somebody’s better movie. No wonder Jordan has called Marlowe something like a science-fiction flick, and cited as his main influence not Chandler but Ridley Scott.
In this telling, Marlowe is chasing down a missing man who may have been murdered—a two-bit lothario and sometime movie prop master named Nico Peterson, ex-lover of Clare Cavendish (a brittle Diane Kruger, whose chemistry with Liam Neeson is daughterly at best). Clare was a perfume heiress in the source novel, but here she’s the daughter of a former screen siren (Jessica Lange) whose life has been entangled for years with an Irish American movie mogul.
Working from a well-reviewed and estate-authorized 2014 Marlowe novel by John Banville, Jordan and script collaborator William Monahan toss Banville’s traditionalist Bay City milieu for a Tinseltown frisson barely suggested in the source—often to bizarre effect. A black chauffeur is an unlikely fan of Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl, and based on the billboard signage, in the era of Gone With the Wind, The Philadelphia Story and The Wizard of Oz, the hit of the season appears to be a Mexican Spitfire B-picture starring Lupe Velez. Danny Huston is cast as a heavy, one of many nods to John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon, which somebody needs to tell Jordan is a movie about detective Sam Spade.
Perhaps grounding his noir homage in a world of vintage movie production is Jordan’s attempt to exorcise or at least acknowledge the Hollywood ghosts of Humphrey Bogart, Dick Powell and Robert Mitchum. Bogie, Powell and Mitchum are cinema’s triumvirate of Marlowe archetypes. Their trench-coated silhouettes from Murder My Sweet, The Big Sleep and Farewell My Lovely loom over everything—even the Marlowe novels that pre-dated them—the way Connery’s sneer and Craig’s pout now loom over everything James Bond.
If clearing the table of old icons is the point, it doesn’t work. It can’t. Because as Philip Marlowe, Liam Neeson is woefully—make that balefully—miscast, by any yardstick other than Chandler’s description of Marlowe’s excessive height. Give Liam credit for trying, though. Marlowe is reportedly his 100th movie, and he’s not phoning it in exactly, but rather falling into an obvious acting trap.
Marlowe has seen it all—he’s a voyeur of the very worst human behaviors, and he’s world-weary to a fault. Liam is just plain weary—laconic, not iconic. Where Bogie and even a comparably aged Robert Mitchum were able to convey Marlowe as a man who at least remembers what caring felt like, Neeson is going through the motions of going through the motions. And the age thing doesn’t help. The only time Neeson’s Marlowe seems truly vulnerable is when he talks about the possibility of regaining his police pension. “I’m getting too old for this” he moans after a fistfight, tempting audience agreement with the very phrase.
It says something tiresome but perennial about the real Hollywood that Liam at 70 years old is still castable as something like a romantic lead, while his co-star Jessica Lange is depicted as a hag past her prime at age 73. As Dorothy Cavendish, Lange serves no discernible plot function in Marlowe, except to tell us how wicked she is and to provide a rhetorical focus for Clare’s alleged mommy issues. But Lange does get off a few solid one-liners, as when she sums up Hollywood stardom by saying “All you need are regular features and the ability to read.” Later she adds, “The key to Hollywood is knowing when the game is up,” reflecting on her own faded glory. The makers of Marlowe and the Chandler estate that sanctioned it should reflect on that subject too.
34 Comments
TIL Danny Huston is a nepo baby.
The Hustons are somewhat unusual in that an older member won his Oscar via a film his son directed, a sort of reverse nepo baby.
I stan Nepo Daddies
I can’t say I necessarily approve of the nepo baby stuff, but then again some of the best actors have been nepo babies.Yet if nepo babies are bad then this “legacies” shit that colleges have are even worse.
he also has a nepo nephew, Jack Huston
Did you ever see the series on netflix called “Five Came Back”? It explores the experience of 5 directors and their work on the front lines during WW2. One of which is John Huston. Great series. These guys really did risk their lives and careers, they didn’t have to do what they did.
Remaking The Big Sleep in the Europe with a 60 year-old sleep-walking Mitchum didn’t work (who was great in Farewell My Lovely). I’m not sure why they thought doing that again would fair any better. Maybe they were trying to distance themselves from HBO’s Perry Mason, but a PI + LA is the essential foundation for a Marlowe movie – the story doesn’t matter (example, Fletch, Big Lebowski,…)
God, does digital filming ever suck for period pieces. Did nobody learn anything from Mann’s “Public Enemies?”
Fincher uses digital for his period pieces, and people don’t complain because he does it very well.
WHAT?! Neeson as Marlowe??? Come on.
I get the appeal of noir and depression-era LA vibes, but damn, Marlowe is kind of a shit character in the Chandler novels I’ve read. Slaps around women, talks shit about gays while rejecting women’s advances. I’d appreciate a complex Marlowe who starts to understand that he hates himself and likes dudes’ butts.
There’s a huge lot of masochism in the books. Marlowe gets knocked out by thugs repeatedly, criminals confess what they did while they’re torturing him and think that they are about to kill him.You can also try some books that I mentioned in a different post, the Lew Archer novels by Ross Macdonald. Lew Archer is basically a more empathetic Marlowe who genuinely cares about the real victims and even professes a few progressive views. Apart from a couple of entries where one of his editors asked him for Mickey Spillane shenanigans, the books focus more on the psychological side and the family traumas.
I feel like writers who really like to delve into this era have some issues they’re working through. I loved the LA Quartet but after reading it straight through just felt terrible about humanity. Man, Elroy really didn’t seem to care for women or minorities.
You’re in for a treat if you try the trilogy he wrote after the LA Quartet, Underworld USA. American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand display the same tone as before, with mannish men and an alarming rate of female characters who are former prostitutes, but Blood’s a Rover turns into some long love letter to a slightly older Jewish woman. It’s entirely at odds with Ellroy’s public persona, and it’s exhilarating to see him take down the toxic masculinity that defined so many of his characters.
Which Marlowe books have you read?
Man Liam is really starting to show his age…
He needs to go back to playing mid-90s RUC officers.
Marlowe has seen it all—he’s a voyeur of
the very worst human behaviors, and he’s world-weary to a fault. Liam is
just plain weary—laconic, not iconic. Where Bogie and even a comparably
aged Robert Mitchum were able to convey Marlowe as a man who at least
remembers what caring felt like, Neeson is going through the motions of
going through the motions. And the age thing doesn’t help. The only time
Neeson’s Marlowe seems truly vulnerable is when he talks about the
possibility of regaining his police pension. “I’m getting too old for
this” he moans after a fistfight, tempting audience agreement with the
very phrase.Do you think ‘laconic’ means tired and uninterested?
We had a reprieve during Covid, but looks like we’re back to studios dumping their garbage in January and February.
Even though I enjoy The Big Sleep, I really haven’t seen a Marlowe movie that captures the writing or the character…normally they just do a version of Sam Spade (which is what Bogie did). And the directors often have no understanding of the books at all (the ending of Altman’s The Long Goodbye). I mean, Hammett is fun, but Raymond Chandler is one of the greatest American writers of all time. He’s the inspiration not only for so many american authors (notably Paul Auster), but for Kobo Abe and Haruki Murakami, the existential detective novel that has become nearly a cliche would not exist without him. I would like to see a stage version of The Little Sister or The High Window done by Lookingglass Theatre where you can hear the narration or something. eh, maybe someday.
I liked Gerald Mohr as the radio Marlowe. Based on his movies I think he could have done a nice job if given the chance, but he wasn’t a big enough name.
The Bogie and Bacall factor definitely raised the esteem of The Big Sleep, the two of them together were bigger than the movie. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a classic noir, but Bogie isn’t a great Marlowe. Murder My Sweet and Dick Powell best captured Chandler’s writing the Marlowe character on film.
Paste Magazine published a list of best cinematic Marlowes and they ranked Gould #1, which is just…wrong. Gould wasn’t really playing Marlowe – he has more in common with Chevy Chase’s Fletch than Chandler’s Marlowe – and the film is basically a satire of the genre.
oh shiiiiiiiiiit look what I found! This website has Teshigahara’s “The Man Without a Map” an adaptation of “The Ruined Map” by Kobo Abe which was pretty much the first novel to fuse Chandler and Kafka:https://archive.org/details/moetsukita-chizu-hiroshi-teshigahara-1968
whoa.
Agreed. Gould tried to play Marlowe cool. Or maybe hip. Marlowe is not hip.
No love for Powers Boothe?
Wait. Wouldn’t it be pouring new wine into old bottles and trying to pass that off as vintage? Like I do in my liquor cabinet with the off-brand stuff going into the prettier bottles.
Neeson as Marlowe? Holy miscast Batman.
This film isn’t based on a book by Chandler, which all parties involved with the production tend to overlook.The unfortunate truth is that Chandler only wrote seven novels involving Marlowe, eight if you include Poodle Springs, which was completed thirty years later by a different writer (Chandler died after writing the first four chapters). All of them but Playback got turned into movies or TV movies.Marlowe is actually based on the The Black-Eyed Blonde, a 2014 Marlowe novel ordered by Chandler’s estate as a continuation to The Long Goodbye. Now, if anybody wanted to make a noir with some LA private investigator, it would be extremely easy to get some great source material. The Lew Archer novels by Ross Macdonald are basically a continuation of Chandler’s themes in post war LA (until the early 70s) , and the character was originally a Marlow ripoff which quickly gained a life of its own. The Moving Target (Harper) and The Drowning Pool got an adaptation starring Paul Newman, but there are 18 original novels in a series that’s highly revered by the likes of William Goldman, Eudora Welty or James Ellroy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lew_Archer
Although it has a mixed reputation, and I admit it’s a very mod sixties movie, I’ve always liked the previous Marlowe from 1969. It’s based on an actual Chandler book ( The Little Sister), James Garner’s a pretty cool Marlowe, Rita Moreno features as a stripper and a certain martial artist makes an appearance.
Neeson as Marlowe is bizarre casting. I think you need an actor who mixes a certain amount of charm with a dash of awkwardness. Since unusual height gets checked as a feature here, I actually think Nicholas Braun (‘Succession’s Cousin Greg) could do something interesting with the part.
Personally, the height comment puzzled me because I don’t remember the stories commenting on Marlowe being unusually tall.
“The dark and violent world of Raymond Chandler’s durable hard-boiled private detective Philip Marlowe brings many descriptors to mind. Tough. Two-fisted. Cynical. ‘Elegant’ comes far down that list.”Gee, I must have missed something when I read every Marlowe novel five times. He was “elegant” enough to hook up with at least one very elegant lady per novel, and sometimes two. That’s elegant enough for me!
I’m not too sure about this one, and I love Marlowe. I really liked the radio shows (after Gerald Mohr took over for Van Heflin). And I have fond memories as a kid watching Powers Boothe play him on HBO back in the 80s when they first started doing TV seires and no one could quite understand why (I’d seek them out online but I’m worried the show was just awful and it will spoil my memory).