MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN (US - 2019) Written and directed by Edward Norton. Cast: Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Willem Dafoe, Alec Baldwin, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Cannavale, Cherry Jones, Michael Kenneth Williams, Leslie Mann, Ethan Suplee, Dallas Roberts, Fisher Stevens, Josh Pais, Robert Ray Wisdom, Radu Spinghel, Peter Lewis, Stephen Adley Guirgis, DeShawn White. (R, 144 mins) If it seems like MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN is the kind of film that's been frozen in ice since 2002 and is just now getting thawed, that could be because director/writer/star Edward Norton has been shepherding it through a nearly two-decade development since he purchased the movie rights to Jonathan Lethem's acclaimed novel shortly after it was published in 1999. But it's also because this is the kind of prestige piece that's becoming an increasingly rare commodity in multiplexes these days. A complex NYC noir with echoes of CHINATOWN and a generous helping of the kind of big-city corruption that's reminiscent of Sidney Lumet, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN probably would've received a more welcome reception as a period HBO or Netflix miniseries, where it would've earned significant acclaim and cleaned up at the Emmys and the Golden Globes. But in theaters, it's a different story. Warner Bros. even seemed to lose confidence in it as the release date approached, knocking it down to 1300 screens in the days before it opened, even after a relentless TV ad blitz in the preceding weeks. The sad fact is that times have changed, and in an era when everything has to be a blockbuster, this kind of modest, mid-level production doesn't bring in the crowds anymore, whether you want to call it a movie for "grownups" or one that's geared toward "older audiences," or simply, a "dad movie." There's plenty of explanations--the trend toward mega-budget franchises, the fact that it'll be on VOD and Blu-ray in three or four months, and that, let's be honest, Norton hasn't headlined a hit movie in a long time. Even though it's a top-notch "dad movie," it's still a small miracle that MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN is in theaters at all.
Norton takes so many liberties with Lethem's novel that one could argue the film is its own separate thing. Two major changes: he moves the setting from the then-present late 1990s to the late 1950s (his feeling being that the use of hard-boiled dialogue in the present day worked on the page but would seem too ironic and gimmicky on the screen, and he's right, since BRICK already beat him to it), and he invents a major character exclusive to the film in one Moses Randolph, a venal political power player inspired by notorious Manhattan city planner and parks commissioner Robert Moses, whose post-Depression projects ran up debt and seemed insidiously designed to isolate black neighborhoods, thus propagating the long decline in areas that became slums and ghettos in the ensuing decades. As loose as Norton plays with Lethem's source work, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN works as a well-made, leisurely-paced, and very character-driven film that unfolds like a good book, with a memorable hero in Lionel Essrog (Norton), who has Tourette's and can't stop shouting inappropriate things at the wrong time. On one hand, this feels like another chance for Norton to do his PRIMAL FEAR/THE SCORE schtick, but fortunately, Norton the actor is kept in check by Norton the director, who's careful to avoid turning his long-gestating pet project into a self-indulgent vanity project.
Lionel works as part of the investigative crew of Brooklyn gumshoe Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), who affectionately calls him "Brooklyn" and makes use of Lionel's ability to remember even the most trivial of details. The crew--which also consists of Tony (Bobby Cannavale), Gilbert (Ethan Suplee), and Danny (Dallas Roberts)--have been with Frank since they were kids, when they were all in an orphanage and he took them under his wing. When Frank is killed (aaaand...exit Bruce Willis 15 minutes in) during a dangerous meet in a fleabag hotel with some mystery men--where Frank hid a phone in a dresser drawer so Lionel could listen at a pay phone across the street--Lionel becomes fixated on piecing together the puzzle of meaningless words and phrases from the conversation to find out what Frank was up to and why he wouldn't clue them in. Lionel's pursuit of numerous disparate leads--Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a legal aid for civil rights and gentrification activist Gabby Hurwitz (Cherry Jones); a jazz club owned by Laura's father (Robert Ray Wisdom); a worldly jazz trumpeter (Michael Kenneth Williams); a disgruntled engineer (Willem Dafoe, midway through growing his LIGHTHOUSE beard) who's fallen on hard times; and Randolph (Alec Baldwin), who runs a dozen powerful city offices but remains an unelected public official with enough juice to bully the mayor (Peter Lewis) into bending to his will--eventually comes together, though he gets roughed up several times by a group of Randolph goons led by Lou (Fisher Stevens) and lets things get personal when he realizes that Laura's life is in danger.
Norton's tic-filled performance can be big but it's never hammy, and it's a welcome approach that everyone seems to understand that there's something wrong with his head that makes him act the way he does. He often has to explain that "It's like a piece of my head broke off and is just joyriding me," followed by something like "Giant faggot munchkin meat!" or "Tits on a Tuesday!" or, if he gets really worked up, a loud "IF!" accompanied by a wild head thrash. Even though the other guys in Frank's office call him "Freakshow," it's a term of endearment among them, as they demonstrably take his insights and opinions seriously. Norton's Lionel is a real character instead of a series of awards-baiting outbursts. The creation of Baldwin's Moses Randolph serves to add social and historical commentary to the story line with the dead-on Robert Moses parallels, as well as an obvious, and maybe slightly ham-fisted modern political allegory, with Baldwin's performance being a significantly less cartoonish interpretation of his SNL Donald Trump impression (Randolph even quotes him nearly verbatim at one point, arguing the semantics of rape and stating "When you're powerful, you can do anything you want"). The Trumpification of Robert Moses into Moses Randolph helps MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN become a film of its time in ways that it couldn't have had Norton made this 20 years ago, though, admittedly, die-hard devotees of Lethem's novel probably won't be enthused about these additional layers.
"Bruce, I said I'd *try* to get you out of here
in one day, but I never made any guarantees."
At 144 minutes, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN may run a little long, but it's always engrossing, and the only weak spot is the perpetually inconvenienced Willis, continuing to give Steven Seagal a run for his rubles as the laziest actor alive. It's really something to watch the way Norton has to shoot Frank's meeting with the four Randolph goons in a gimmicky way to cover for Willis obviously not being there with Fisher Stevens and the other actors. The hotel room is dark and shadowy and the image drifts in and out of focus in an almost hallucinatory fashion for no reason, with Willis obviously doubled from the back (the guy's head isn't even shaped like Willis') and his close-ups are always just him with no one else in the shot when he's responding to someone's questions. This sequence is in the first ten minutes and it actually gets the film off to a clunky start because it looks like Norton is going for some pointless auteur wankery right out of the gate until you realize that it's this way because Willis can't even be bothered to show up for work on good movies, let alone Lionsgate's landmark, ongoing "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series. When Norton was on the dais of Comedy Central's roast of Willis last year, with MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN already wrapped, he wondered if he could get away with the things Willis does: "Could I just leave the set of a movie after my close-ups are done and have my co-stars act opposite a C-stand with a red X taped to it while a script girl reads my dialogue to them?" Gentle ribbing or spoken from experience?
BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) (US - 2014) Directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu. Written by Alejandro G. Inarritu, Nicolas Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr, and Armando Bo. Cast: Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Lindsay Duncan, Jeremy Shamos, Merritt Wever, Clark Middleton, Damian Young, Bill Camp, Benjamin Kanes. (R, 119 mins)
Though it was conceived by AMORES PERROS and 21 GRAMS director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and three collaborating screenwriters, the surreal dark comedy BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) could easily be interpreted as a soul-baring confessional for Michael Keaton and an analytical walk through his career. Both Inarritu and Keaton say that the film wasn't written specifically for Keaton, but after seeing BIRDMAN, it's impossible to picture anyone else starring in it. So many elements of Keaton's career and the public's perception of him--as well as the image of one co-star in particular--are woven into the fabric of the story that in many ways, you could argue that this is Keaton's ALL THAT JAZZ...minus, of course, the production numbers and the general theme of substance-abetted self-destruction. Both BIRDMAN and the 1979 Bob Fosse classic have a past-his-prime figure (actor in BIRDMAN, director in JAZZ) laying it all on the line for a production that's a culmination of his life's work, a vindication of his existence, a middle-finger response to those critics and contemporaries who doubted and dismissed him.
Similar to Keaton turning down $15 million for a third BATMAN movie in 1995, his Riggan Thomson is a faded Hollywood celebrity who gave up a huge payday 20 years earlier when he walked away from the superhero franchise BIRDMAN. His Hollywood career never regained momentum, and now, Riggan is orchestrating what he believes will be his ultimate achievement, one that finally validates him as a serious artist. He's mounting a stage production of the Raymond Carver short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." He's the writer, director, star, and financier, and it's not going well. He's run through his fortune to the point where he has to remortgage his home in Malibu that's supposed to belong to his recovering junkie daughter Sam (Emma Stone), and the other male lead (Jeremy Shamos) is such a terrible actor that Riggan may or may not have arranged for a stage light to fall directly on his head. The play's female lead Lesley (Naomi Watts), given her big break by Riggan, suggests her boyfriend Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) step into the vacated role. Shiner is a Broadway actor of repute, and his involvement immediately boosts ticket sales and garners more publicity, which gives the notoriously volatile Shiner enough ammo to start questioning Riggan's writing and directing decisions and trying to take more artistic control over the development of his character and the staging of the play itself (as far back as AMERICAN HISTORY X, Norton has been an infamously pushy control freak, undermining directors, writers, and co-stars, and is a remarkably good sport in the way he allows Inarritu to lampoon that reputation here). Riggan is tortured by self-doubt over this project, with Shiner's constant meddling, his manager/lawyer Jake (Zach Galifianakis) fretting over the money, and the probable pregnancy of his girlfriend/co-star Laura (Andrea Riseborough), and when alone, demonstrates magical, telekinetic powers and is both bolstered and harangued by the deep, forceful voice of Birdman. Riggan's grip on reality is slipping with each passing day as opening night approaches, and it's not helped by a bitter, spiteful Broadway critic (Lindsay Duncan) who has vowed to destroy him and everything he represents about celebrity culture.
BIRDMAN is often bilious in its tone, as Inarritu takes aim at vacuous celebrities, the fleeting nature of fame, pretentious actors, critics more interested in tearing someone down rather than attempting to understand their art, and a public that judges the worth of something by how much it's trending on social media. Even Keaton approaches it in a self-aware, self-deprecating manner (while destroying his dressing room, Riggan rants about how he's gotten old, wrinkled, flabby, and balding, screaming "You look like a turkey with leukemia!" at the mirror). In a lot of ways, it's the NETWORK of backstage dramas, but above all that, it's a career-defining validation of Michael Keaton, one of the busiest actors of the '80s and early '90s who never really went away, but just didn't seem to be working as much as he should be, or on projects that really showcased his talent. From his first moments on the big screen in Ron Howard's NIGHT SHIFT back in 1982, it was obvious that Keaton was a star. But in walking away from BATMAN FOREVER because he thought the script was terrible and didn't want to do it without Tim Burton, he chose integrity over money, and the momentum was never the same. He never became a pariah, but at the same time, Hollywood never seemed sure of him after that. Though he had some hits (1993's MY LIFE, 1996's MULTIPLICITY) and shined in ensemble pieces (1997's JACKIE BROWN), Keaton stepped back after 1998's JACK FROST and worked very sparingly throughout the next decade, with a Golden Globe-nominated performance in the 2002 HBO film LIVE FROM BAGHDAD, a couple of straight-to-video titles and a minor hit with the 2005 horror film WHITE NOISE. To a certain demographic, he's probably best known as the voice of Chick Hicks in the CARS franchise, but in recent years, Keaton has focused on smaller films like 2006's Don DeLillo-scripted GAME 6 and his own little-seen 2008 directing effort THE MERRY GENTLEMAN, while popping up in things like 2005's HERBIE: FULLY LOADED or this year's ROBOCOP remake and NEED FOR SPEED when he has a need for money. It was probably Keaton's scene-stealing supporting turn in the 2010 Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg comedy THE OTHER GUYS, as a beleaguered, TLC-referencing police captain forced to take a second job at Bed Bath & Beyond because he "has a kid at NYU who wants to explore his bisexuality and become a DJ," that reminded audiences of just how funny he could be. But he's a terrific serious actor as well, even though that's mostly been demonstrated by his playing villains in 1990's PACIFIC HEIGHTS and 1998's DESPERATE MEASURES. Compared to the height of his 1980s fame, the now-63-year-old Keaton was pretty much off the radar pre-BIRDMAN, but perhaps he's always been the kind of actor who wouldn't be fully appreciated until he was older. Make no mistake: this is the role of Keaton's career.
It's impossible to discuss all of the ALL THAT JAZZ parallels without going into spoilers, but a major example is the way both films take frequent leaves from reality: BIRDMAN with Riggan's telekinetic and increasingly destructive powers, and his conversations with his younger self in the Birdman costume (played by uncredited Benjamin Kanes) who eggs him on with either encouragement or scorn; and ALL THAT JAZZ's booze-addled, pill-popping Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) and his conversations with an angel (Jessica Lange) who's alternately sympathetic and derisively mocking. Riggan and Gideon are men pushing themselves to the brink, cognizant of their failures both professional and personal, both men are on friendly terms with ex-wives they treated badly but who knew the kind of man they were marrying, and both try to salvage relationships with their daughters and their current girlfriends. Both will stop at nothing to prove something to...themselves? It costs Joe Gideon his life in a way that questions just how much of ALL THAT JAZZ was supposed to be really happening, and by the end, that comparison comes into play with BIRDMAN. It's a strange, funny, angry, and dreamlike film, shot by the great cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (CHILDREN OF MEN, THE TREE OF LIFE, and an Oscar winner for his work on GRAVITY) in a way that deceptively makes the entire two-hour film play like one continuous take. Inarritu doesn't spotlight the gimmickry or the trickery that goes along in maintaining the illusion, but in coupling it with a persistent jazz drumming score, there's an uneasy tension that grows throttling as the film--and Riggan Thomsen himself--careen toward their destiny. BIRDMAN isn't for everyone, but any fan of Michael Keaton must consider it a must-see as he delivers one of the great film performances in recent years.
Directed by Tony Gilroy. Written by Tony Gilroy & Dan Gilroy. Cast: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Stacy Keach, Joan Allen, Albert Finney, David Strathairn, Scott Glenn, Oscar Isaac, Zeljko Ivanek, Dennis Boutsikaris, Corey Stoll, Donna Murphy, Elizabeth Marvel, Louis Ozawa Changchien, Paddy Considine. (PG-13, 133 mins)
The films in the Matt Damon-starring BOURNE trilogy are arguably the most highly-regarded action films of the last decade. As entertaining as 2002's THE BOURNE IDENTITY was, it wasn't until 2004's THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, which found director Paul Greengrass taking over for IDENTITY's Doug Liman, that the series really hit its stride. The sense of handheld immediacy that Greengrass brought to his breakthrough film BLOODY SUNDAY (2002) translated beautifully to complex chase sequences that, for better or worse, changed the way action films were constructed and clearly influenced how the makers of 2006's CASINO ROYALE approached reinventing James Bond. That said, Greengrass' techniques aren't easy to imitate effectively, and a lot of action films that have followed in the wake of SUPREMACY and 2007's THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM fell--and continue to fall--victim to hyper-edited, overly-frenetic shaky-cam that renders a lot of the action incomprehensible and headache-inducing. A lot of people cite Greengrass as the culprit for the action shaky-cam phenomenon, but that's like blaming Quentin Tarantino for all the RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION ripoffs that flooded video stores in the 1990s. It's not Greengrass' fault that he's great at what he does and other filmmakers aren't.
Which brings us to the hybrid reboot/parallel story THE BOURNE LEGACY, which takes its title from a post-Robert Ludlum Bourne novel by Eric Van Lustbader, but doesn't use Lustbader's novel as a source. Greengrass and Damon are out, and in their stead are Tony Gilroy and compulsive franchise-joiner Jeremy Renner (following his work in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL and THE AVENGERS). Taking place at the same time as THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, LEGACY deals with the effects of that film's Treadstone and Blackbriar debacles on Outcome, a top-secret NSA project run by Col. Byer (Edward Norton) and Adm. Turso (Stacy Keach). When the Jason Bourne story is leaked by the British reporter (Paddy Considine) killed in ULTIMATUM, and a YouTube video surfaces showing Treadstone head Dr. Hirsch (Albert Finney) toasting a top Outcome doc at a birthday dinner, Byer and Turso panic and decide to terminate their Outcome agents to erase any connections between them and the CIA, Treadstone, or Blackbriar. They believe they've gotten rid of all their agents, but one--Aaron Cross (Renner)--is in the Alaskan wilderness and manages to fool them into thinking he's dead. Cross is hooked on blue and green pills--provided by Outcome doctors--that enhance his intelligence and combat skills. He's dangerously low on both and without consistent dosage, those vital skills nosedive. Outcome's goal was to genetically alter average agents and turn them into espionage supermen. Making his way back to D.C., Cross eventually joins forces with Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), who's also being targeted by Outcome for knowing too much about the terminated operation.
Gilroy wrote or co-wrote the three previous BOURNE outings, and on paper, promoting him to director seemed like a win-win. He knows the franchise and in the meantime, got an Oscar nomination for his directorial debut with 2007's MICHAEL CLAYTON. But neither MICHAEL CLAYTON nor Gilroy's follow-up, the romantic spy comedy DUPLICITY, were big on intense action, and Gilroy is a writer first. As a result, THE BOURNE LEGACY has a lot of exposition that borders on incoherence, and there's entirely too much chronic overexplaining where the more people talk, the less sense things make. What happens in a lot of THE BOURNE LEGACY is that Gilroy the director couldn't part with anything Gilroy the writer had on the page. There's several instances of deflated tension when characters just talk and talk and talk. That works in character-driven pieces like MICHAEL CLAYTON, but in something like a BOURNE film, it's a momentum killer. Renner and Weisz are fine in the leads, and AMERICAN HISTORY X stars Norton and Keach (it's nice to see him on the big screen again) make formidable villains until Gilroy gives them nothing more to do but pace around in their "crisis suite," staring at monitors, gritting their teeth, and barking into speakerphones where their dialogue is essentially reduced to "Where the hell is he?!", "That's him/her!", "We need to contain this!" and "Find Aaron Cross!" The only thing that's missing is a scene where Norton stands at his office window overlooking D.C., and scans the horizon before gravely intoning "Where are you?"
Too much of THE BOURNE LEGACY just feels like a bland retread, right down to the climactic motorcycle/car chase through the streets of Manila. Gilroy really drops the ball here, shooting the extended chase as more or less a series of close-ups of the actors. It's a maddeningly incoherent blur of an action sequence that ends up being another unsatisfying attempt at mimicking Greengrass' techniques. Cross and Marta are being chased on a motorcycle by a crazed, nameless killing machine (Louis Ozawa Changchien) dispatched by Outcome, and the big payoff is executed with a terrible, video-gamey CGI effect that induced chuckles instead of "Whoa!"'s from the audience. Bourne faced some memorably lethal assassins in earlier films--The Professor (Clive Owen) in IDENTITY, Kirill (Karl Urban) in SUPREMACY, and Paz (Edgar Ramirez) in ULTIMATUM, but Gilroy can't even be bothered to give Changchien a name, dialogue, or character traits, instead opting to just drop him into the film 110 minutes in, just so there's someone to pursue them for the by now obligatory big chase.
THE BOURNE LEGACY has one of the best casts of the year, but you wouldn't know it by how badly Gilroy wastes most of it. Past BOURNE co-stars appear in blink-and-you'll-miss-them walk-ons that aren't even enough to be called cameos: Finney's entire role consists a blurry YouTube clip lasting 15 seconds tops and he appears in a photo later. David Strathairn has two brief scenes, and one of them is lifted from ULTIMATUM; Scott Glenn as CIA head Ezra Kramer has a short conversation with Keach at the beginning and is gone by the five-minute mark; Joan Allen, so terrific in SUPREMACY and ULTIMATUM, returns as CIA deputy director/scapegoat Pam Landy, appearing just past the 120-minute mark and shown exiting a courthouse and getting into a car, with one line of dialogue. And an uncredited Considine's two brief shots appear to be from ULTIMATUM. I realize these characters are here to establish a bridge between ULTIMATUM and LEGACY and to illustrate that they're taking place simultaneously, but why assemble that accomplished a cast and give them absolutely nothing to do? It's so rare to see the great Albert Finney these days that one can't help but be a little disappointed to find him promimently-billed and getting less screen time than the actual Bela Lugosi in PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.
And why not just recast the Bourne role if Damon wanted to move on? Why create "Aaron Cross" in the first place? Have Renner play Bourne and base it one of Lustbader's novels instead of creating some hokey new plot about pharmaceutically-enhanced spies. There was an element of drama and suspense to the amnesia-stricken Jason Bourne. Aaron Cross is just after some pills. Are Gilroy and Universal thinking a few films ahead? Are they anticipating Damon returning to the series? Or will Bourne return and team up with Cross at some point? Or better yet, two films from now, will it be revealed that Cross and Bourne are the same person? With the BOURNE alumni walk-ons and the creation of a new character, there were times in THE BOURNE LEGACY where it started to resemble Blake Edwards trying to keep the PINK PANTHER series going without Peter Sellers. And there you have it: THE BOURNE LEGACY is to the BOURNE franchise what CURSE OF THE PINK PANTHER was to that series. That's not a knock on Jeremy Renner, but rather, on the questionable decisions made by the filmmakers. Passably entertaining at times, lots of returning faces to establish familiarity and sell us on this new model, but it's a decidedly inferior product that pales in comparison to its predecessors. In trying to continue the BOURNE series, the filmmakers have ended up making what amounts to an uninspired imitation.
