#1299 Motherless Brooklyn
Verfasst: 2019-12-10 1:19
One could think that "Motherless Brooklyn" was the directorial debut of actor Edward Norton, but one would be wrong doing so. It has taken him more than a thousand sneak previews to return to the director's chair, but we actually screened his first-time effort, the comedy "Keeping the Faith" with Ben Stiller and Jenna Elfman, almost two decades ago in July of 2000 (Sneak #0296).
While that film was written by Stuart Blumberg (who later returned to the sneak with #0498 "The Girl Next Door" and #0830 "The Kids are All Right"), this time, Norton chose to pen the script himself (his first filmed screenplay) by adapting Jonathan Lethem's ("A Scanner Darkly") 1999 novel, which was published in Germany in 2001. Norton changed many things, though, as the original took place in the decidedly different 1990s, and featured, among other things, a shady japanese corporation and a buddhist center for self-discovery with a hidden agenda.
This is all wholly absent from Norton's 1950s-set "Motherless Brookly", as can be seen in the trailer:
How did you like this hommage to classic Gangster ballads and film noir in general? How did you enjoy the performances, first and foremost by Edward Norton, but also by supporting cast members ranging from Alec Baldwin to Willem Dafoe, Bobby Canavale, Bruce Willis, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw to name just a few? What about the detective story, the murder mystery at the center of it all? Just write your thoughts about the film into a reply to this post, and don't just put it them a train station locker somewhere.
