Clare Cavendish (Diane Kruger) enlists private eye Philip Marlowe (Liam Neeson) to track down the whereabouts of her presumed-to-be-dead lover, Nico Peterson (François Arnaud).  Despite having been struck by a vehicle outside of a luxurious country club, Clare is convinced she has seen her dearly departed alive and well in Mexico, but she is not the only one with a vested interest in finding Nico.  Dorothy Quincannon (Jessica Lange), Clare’s mother, is also looking to locate the Hollywood prop master.   

Neil Jordan directs Marlowe, from a script he co-wrote with William Monahan based on John Banville’s novel, The Black Eyed Blond.  Released by Briarcliff Entertainment, the noir mystery spirals through the darkest trenches of 1930s Hollywood across its 109-minute runtime.  Xavi Giménez’s camera soaks in all the allure of the handsomely made production, led by John Beard, never allowing audiences for an instant not to be enraptured by the sexy displays of opulence by the rich and famous in the dimly lit back rooms of Hollywood where the cigarette smoke obscures just enough to be tantalizing and coax us to stay around just a little while longer.  

At the head of the film, Neeson operates well in the tropes of a tired gumshoe, ready for retirement but lured into one more case by a pretty face and an envelope full of cash. As far as Neeson-led, Q1, beat-em-up features go, there are far more offensive (to the tastes) and paint-by-numbers options out there, as Marlowe has a lot of beauty, care, and focus poured into its sets and production design. Neeson himself even chuckles after being ambushed by a pair of thugs, self-aware that he is getting too old for this, but he can still hold his own and bring a magnetic personality to the screen even if the fight choreography is very simple and unengaging, especially when compared to the more dynamic sequences on the veteran actor’s resume.  

While Neeson does his best – and, in earnest, so does the entire cast – the script does them no favors. It is a simple drug-running plot that can be seen from a mile away, but it is made so unnecessarily incomprehensible in an effort to pad the run time which would have been better served by spinning a more intriguing yarn. The script scratches at some interesting elements of the time; Marlowe asking Clare if Nico was a homosexual, the lingering suspicion from the first Red Scare that still influenced decision-making in the town, as well as topics of class and race with Lou Hendrick’s (Alan Cumming) African American chauffer, Cedric (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Instead of examining these issues, Marlowe presents a run-of-the-mill cocaine plot centered around the owner of the country club, Floyd Hanson (Danny Huston), who wears his guilt on his sleeve from our first introduction with the mogul. 

Ultimately, the script needed some major re-tooling. While the buddy comedy aspects between Marlowe and Cedric late in the film are enjoyable, tonally, they do not fit in with the rest of the film. This humor and pomp would certainly have added a bit of needed levity and life to the exposition-heavy first and middle acts, but Jordan seemed far more interested in creating a moody and melodramatic noir. 

What is most frustrating then is that he almost completely ignores and obscures the dynamic trio of Neeson, Kruger, and Lange, glossing over the deceit and jealousy between the mother and daughter in favor of the missing drug mule plot. In the few scenes where the three actors do get to interact with each other, Jordan seems unaware of the chemistry on screen and uninterested in capitalizing on it. Thankfully, when Neeson is with the women individually, Jordan allows them to cook and it is these moments that help keep audiences engaged with Marlowe despite the thin-yet-overwritten story.

It is a shame that actors of this caliber are being utilized on such a forgettable endeavor, but it is a silver lining for us who are sitting down to watch. Without the shimmering star power throughout and impressive production design, Marlowe would be a near-impossible task, but as it stands it is just a completely forgettable story that is so deeply entrenched in the tropes of the genre that it becomes immediately predictable even without trying. It is as if Jordan is preoccupied with creating a homage to the genre that he is almost afraid to bend the rules and make something unique, new, or fresh. There is nothing here that has not been seen a million times over, but instead of being comforting, it just feels lazy on the page and some of the hardest films to engage with are ones that take such easy routes when it comes to their storytelling.