DVD Review: Marlowe (2022)

Marlowe

(DVD Marlowe)

 

Liam Neeson is not an actor I would have pictured in the titular role of a Philip Marlowe film. I’ve grown up on various filmed versions of the Marlowe stories, and the main character has been embodied by everyone from James Garner and Elliot Gould, to Robert Mitchum and Robert Montgomery. But Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep is still the yardstick by which they’re all measured. Neeson, for whom this was his 100th film appearance, proves to be a quite capable, though somewhat subdued, Marlowe.

 

Marlowe features both a screenplay and direction by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Michael Collins, Byzantium, The Borgias, etc.), and he does a fair job of trying to capture the style and tone of a “film noir”-era movie, without relying on overly dark tones and tons of shadows. In this film, Los Angeles is shown in muted, sun-strewn tones. The sets are gorgeous, the costumes first rate, and the minimalist score is terrific. But where this new Marlowe succeeds best is in its supporting cast, which features Diane Kruger, Jessica Lange, Francois Arnauld, Danny Huston, Alan Cumming, Colm Meaney and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje in significant roles.

If you’re a fan of classic mysteries, with hard-bitten detectives being misled by clients, but still feeling compelled to solve their cases because it is the right thing to do, this intriguing little entry from 2022 should be right up your alley. There’s nothing groundbreaking about this one — in many ways it is somewhat formulaic for the detective genre — but it is still done in a very stylish way!

 

Based on the novel The Black-Eyed Blonde by award-winning author John Banville (under the pen name Benjamin Black), which was a 2014 Philip Marlowe novel authorized by the Raymond Chandler estate after Chandler’s passing.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try any of the many previous film incarnations of Philip Marlowe. I personally recommend Marlowe starring James Garner (updated to the 1960s, featuring Bruce Lee the only time he ever played a villain), The Long Goodbye starring Elliot Gould (updated to the 1970s with a wry sense of humor), and the classic The Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart.)

 

(Also available in traditional print format.)

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for this film )

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you watched this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!