Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
Cast: Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, Jessica Lange, Ian Hart, Danny Huston, Colm Meaney, Ian Hart, Alan Cumming, Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje, Stella Stocker, François Arnaud, Mitchell Mullen, Patrick Muldoon, Daniela Melchior, Roberto Peralta, J.M. Maciá, Michael Garvey, David Lifschitz, Anton Antoniadis, Minnie Marx, Seána Kerslake, Julius Cotter, Michael Strelow.
Whether in classic sense of the genre, or in its more functional, but less direct late 20th Century/21st Century observance, Noir influences the cinematic lover in ways that other fields of the medium fail to deliver.
Noir/Neo Noir allows us to glimpse at our own reactions to crime without it appearing as the side of the perceived right must be the only answer to justice. It is in that reflection that allows the creation of Raymond Chandler, who himself could effectively be observed as having had two lives, one of the oil executive and the detective writer either side of the horrific tragedy that was The Great Depression, to be the fierce narrator of the darkness against the bright lights of California.
Despite appearances, Philip Marlowe is a complex character, and the man is framed by those who have played the private detective, from Dick Powell, the man arguably most synonymous with the role, Humphrey Bogart, the suave James Garner, the gritty performance of Elliot Gould, the frightening fear installed by Robert Mitchum, and now in in a time less enamoured by the quick talking sarcasm displayed by others on screen, Liam Neeson portrays a man more empathetic to the world around him, still one who fight his way out of an issue, but also one who exhibits the truth of his period, who shows his working class heritage with a greater ferocity than any other before him.
Whilst the heritage is on show, it is the grit and the drama that is sadly lacking, the story, entertaining and with vigour, lacks the deft muscle and truth into which Neo Noir thrives. Even though there has been over forty years between Marlowe cinematic adaptations you cannot but help comparing the tales on offer, and by default that of its apparent villains and the femme fatale to which the genre depends greatly on.
Danny Huston and Diane Kruger give performances that, whilst not exactly lighting up the screen, are enough in which to distrust the actions of their respective characters, and indeed Ms. Kruger’s screen mother, the excellent Jessica Lange, gives a subtle execution of the older woman in film to which the industry must be seen to nurture in the years to come.
A film which reminds the viewing public of one of literatures and cinema’s greatest creations, which brings Raymond Chandler back into view, Marlowe is the chance to return to a defining art, to hold as an example of how Noir and Neo/Noir is an example of our own tainted hearts on screen.
Ian D. Hall