MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN
***
Dir: Edward Norton (15, 144 mins)
A complex film noir set in the 1950s with an unconventional hero, a detective with Tourette Syndrome embroiled in corruption in New York. Writer/director/star Edward Norton’s film is an involving if overlong adaptation of Jonathan Letham’s book. Norton plays Lionel Essrog, a man with tics and uncontrollable outbursts who nevertheless finds employ in the services of Bruce Willis’ Frank Minna. Minna ends up getting shot and before his death, confides in Lionel the word Formosa, leading him to race off into the murkier side of New York to get answers. This brings him to Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin), based on the man who was known as the master builder of modern New York, Robert Moses. In the 1950s New York was ripped apart, entire neighbourhoods levelled to create highways and bridges displacing mostly poor and ethnic communities. Rounding out the cast are heavy hitters like Willem Defoe and Bobby Cannavale in cameo roles, along with Gugu Mbathu-Raw’s activist. Talky and intelligent but sometimes a little inert, this still remains an intriguing noir with a social conscience.
Opens Nov 1
words KEIRON SELF
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