Marlowe (2022)

Clare Cavendish (Diane Kruger) arrives at the office of Philip Marlowe (Liam Neeson) and asks that he locate her lover.  Nico Peterson (Francois Arnaud) is a props man at Pacific Pictures and has suddenly gone missing.  Marlowe accepts the case and soon discovers that Nico Peterson was killed in a hit and run accident.  When he reveals this to Clare, she knew that when she hired him.  However, she saw him alive in Tiajuana a week ago.  When he leaves, he is confronted by Dorothy Quincannon (Jessica Lange), who is a former film starlet, filthy rich thanks to her deceased husband's oil money, and Clare's mother.  Peterson was killed just outside an exclusive club run by Floyd Hanson (Danny Houston).  Nico was reportedly pursued by a pair of Mexicans with murder in their eyes.  He was also in debt to a noted criminal, Lou Hendricks (Alan Cumming).  As a former investigator for the LA DA, Marlowe has contacts with the police, notably Detective Joe Green (Ian Hart) and Detective Bernie Ohls (Colm Meaney).  Both of them let Marlowe do the breaking and entering that will eventually crack the case.

To its credit, it has a convoluted plot that Raymond Chandler might spin.  The body count is high.  The Valentines Day Massacre was nothing when compared to the death toll of a Marlowe investigation.  There are so many characters with clashing goals and interests.  The man behind the scenes - the big villain who steers the drug trafficking and prostitution that are revealed - proves to be a character who has a very small role and is hardly impacted by the events of the story.  Based on The Black-Eyed Blonde by John Banville, this is not actually a Raymond Chandler story, just a sad imitation.

Everyone is much too old, by like 25 to 30 years too old!  The movie takes place in 1939 when Marlowe should be in his mid to late thirties but is played by a 70-year-old Liam Neeson.  Diane Kruger is in her mid-40s as the femme fatale but, according to the dialogue, Marlowe says "You're half my age."  Clearly, the script expected an actress around 20 vs. a Marlowe of about 40.  The nonsense continues when Dorothy states that Nico is "too old" for her daughter.  Um, Kruger is 9 years older than Arnaud.  Maybe do some adjustments to the script to take account of the actual casting rather than the anticipated casting.  You have to give the actors credit for delivering the lines with a straight face.  Marlowe and Hanson are veterans of the Great War, which was just over 20 years earlier, meaning they would have been in their late 40s at the time; that would be the age of career military men, not conscripts.  Jessica Lange's character had a movie career which has stalled.  She is 72!  Hollywood didn't become a motion picture hub until 1912, when - let's do the math - she was 45!  Why was Jessica Lange cast?  Really, Diane Kruger should have played Dorothy and some young actress played Clare.  Marlowe (70), Green (58), and Ohls (69) repeatedly talk about who has a pension and who doesn't.  This is a stupid conversation for men of this age.  If this movie had been made in 1997 with this same cast, it wouldn't have been so ludicrous.

It is no wonder this movie bombed.  Skip.