“Motherless Brooklyn”– Movie Review

On the closing night of the 57th New York Film Festival, I attended the New York Premiere of the new crime drama by Edward Norton, “Motherless Brooklyn”. 

Synopsis

When a private investigator turns up dead, one of his associates investigates the murder – but when he finds out what’s behind it all, his life changes forever.

Story

Lionel (Norton) is haunted by the death of his friend, mentor and employer Frank (Bruce Willis).  Particularly troubling to Lionel is the fact that Frank expected him to be his backup, but Lionel was unsuccessful in saving Frank from being murdered.  Having worked for him as a private investigator, Lionel has learned enough skills from Frank to go out on his own and make an attempt at solving the murder.  Exactly who killed Frank and why?  Despite suffering from a severe case of Tourette Syndrome, Lionel is determined that he would not rest until he got the answers.

Following various leads takes Lionel to a curious path:  New York City real estate.  He meets Laura (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a beautiful young woman who works as an assistant to an activist fighting the real estate changes forcing low-income people in many neighborhoods to move.  These changes are being brought about by the city’s powerful Borough Authority chief Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin); Randolph is developing not only the infrastructure around the city but also performing massive renovations on affordable buildings in low-income areas, rendering them available only to wealthier New Yorkers. 

The deeper that Lionel insists on digging into Randolph’s organization, the more corruption he uncovers.  Many city politicians are on the take and Randolph is even manipulating his own down-on-his-luck brother Paul (Willem Dafoe) into working with him.  Upon learning that Laura is endangered because of her connection to the community activists, Lionel must try to protect her.  When Lionel discovers that Randolph had a hand in Frank’s death, will he be able to bring such a powerful man to justice or will he need to cultivate his own set of furtive connections that will topple over Randolph’s empire?         

Review

The story goes that Edward Norton spent about a decade of his life trying to get “Motherless Brooklyn” made.  While we can all be glad that he finally got it out of his system, let’s hope he will now move on to bigger and better projects.  Despite an incredible cast, Norton’s movie (adapted from the novel by Jonathan Lethem) is a little too reminiscent of “Chinatown” – and the comparison is inevitable.  The differences, of course, are that this is set in the 1950’s in Brooklyn while “Chinatown” is 1930’s Los Angeles.  Another difference is that “Chinatown” is a far superior film. 

One hardly knows where to begin when it comes to scrutinizing “Motherless Brooklyn”.  It’s too long, too complicated and Norton’s performance as a private investigator suffering from Tourette Syndrome is downright distracting – and detracts from the movie itself.  Let’s start with the length:  at two and a half hours, it only adds to the feeling that this is some kind of self-indulgent vanity project for the filmmaker.  He simply did not know where or how to edit this down to a more reasonable length.  Part of why it may be so long conveniently segues to the other problem:  the story is so byzantine that you might have a substantial challenge finding your way through.  Lastly, Norton may have thought that playing someone with such an obvious affliction would fast-track him to an acting award.  Bad reason to take on a role. 

What, if anything, did “Motherless Brooklyn” get right?  For one thing, Baldwin’s character of Moses Randolph does a fairly accurate job of portraying the real-life person on whom it is based – none other than the late Robert Moses, the so-called “master builder” of New York City; many of his designs for city planning were based on biased socio-economic and racist rationale.  Also, the production design should be rightly credited; they were able to get the look of 1950’s New York City fairly well.  Prior to the screening, Norton and much of the cast introduced the film; in doing so, he properly acknowledged the death of FDNY Firefighter Michael Davidson, who perished while battling a blaze in a Harlem building used as a setting in the movie.