Even if he had taken on the role 30 or 40 years ago, 70-year-old Liam Neeson would be an odd fit for Philip Marlowe. Raymond Chandler's L.A. detective, whatever his disposition (which was frequently not great), could cut a sprightly figure. This was true in Chandler's novels and for most of the great actors who have played Marlowe over the years, including Humphrey Bogart, Dick Powell, James Garner, and Elliott Gould. Even when playing comedy—even when clearing chain fences in thirteen cuts in seven seconds, or whatever—Neeson has a weight to him that doesn't let up. In the wrong context, it can result in lugubrious rather than gravitas performances.


But here's Neeson, 70, reuniting with his "Michael Collins" director Neil Jordan to play the title role in "Marlowe," adapted not from a Chandler novel but from one by John Banville and sanctioned by Chandler's estate. The film begins with a shot of palm trees against the sun in Bay City, Los Angeles, in 1939, before showing us Marlowe conjuring himself out of bed.


Despite the fact that he cut a sprightly figure, Marlowe was never a light or lighthearted character. Marlowe is devoid of joie de vivre. Chandler envisioned the detective as a modern-day knight. There was a sense of purpose and duty behind his ironic observations and biting one-liners. According to the old song, a man must be true to his code. Chandler's Marlowe is the same, as are Jordan and Neeson. Whereas other Marlowes in film were let off with simple world-weariness, Neeson sometimes acts as if he's been run over by a steamroller.


That isn't a complaint, or it doesn't have to be. I was able to get a reasonable amount of enjoyment out of this film by not making it one—that is, by allowing Neeson and Jordan to have their heads.


The plot is not of the near-Gordian knot variety that Chandler's books were known for. It's more like, well, "Chinatown," and Danny Huston's presence as a transparent—and white-suited!—villain emphasizes that. Clare Cavendish, played by Diane Kruger, approaches Marlowe about the disappearance of her young, movie-industry-affiliated boyfriend. It turns out that the guy faked his death, which Clare suspected but didn't tell Marlowe when she hired her. Clare also has a dowager-ish mother (Jessica Lange) who is intensely interested in her daughter's personal life as well as the life of an ostensible "ambassador" who is involved in the lifeblood of a (fictional) film studio.


Add to that Huston's sleazy nightclub owner, a frightened sister-of-the-not-actually-deceased, an aging starlet with some dope on the not-actually-deceased, a couple of cop friends of Marlowe's, a side order of corrupt bigwig played by Alan Cumming, and a savvier-than-expected chauffeur (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), and you've got more than sufficient components for a percolating plot.


The problem is that "Marlowe" doesn't do much percolating. The script by William Monahan and Neil Jordan maintains a near-elegiac pace and tone (aided and sometimes mildly overthrown by David Holmes' varied score) while peppering the dialogue with references to Christopher Marlowe, James Joyce, William Strunk, Jr., and Greek myth. He imbues all of his characters with a sense of self-consciousness, of being players in a pool of rot, a place where some want to wallow and others want to come out at least a little clean. "You're a very perceptive and sensitive man, Mr. Marlowe," Kruger's character says to Neeson early on. I'm sure it gets you in trouble." The rest of the film is an extension of that declaration.


There are several fight scenes, but Neeson never enters them eager to show off his, ahem, skills. Before striking, he looks around the room, assesses the situation, and plans his opening move as if he were playing chess. (Which is something Marlowe does, both on the page and in this illustration.) He realizes after one set-to that, yes, he is getting too old for this. However, this cinematic prose-poem considers the fact that "too old" can also mean "not dead yet." And the film does build up a head of sinister steam, culminating in a nightclub siege that is a riot of colored lights (reminiscent of scenes from Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" and Martin Scorsese's "New York, New York") and grisly corpses.


In this vision, Marlowe's code is open to internal negotiation. By the end of the film, the detective behaves more like a Dashiell Hammett protagonist than Raymond Chandler would consider appropriate. This is revisionist, but it's done with intelligence and, yes, perceptiveness and sensitivity.



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