Only Willem Dafoe, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Leslie Mann (in a small part) can find their footing. In spite of an all-star cast that includes Alec Baldwin, Bruce Willis, Bobby Cannavale and Michael Kenneth Williams, few actors are given room to breathe and inject personality into their roles. He acts more than he listens, creating a strange atmosphere in a film that already has a clumsy construction. Norton is fine as Essrog, but he sometimes lacks generosity of spirit in the way he deals with other actors.
Things improve slightly for the large middle section as Lionel Essrog abandons his office to go on his investigation. The sequence, which should have been clear as day, starts everything up on the wrong foot as we spend the next 20 or so minutes trying to piece together the basic incidents of the inciting moment. The audience struggles to keep track of all the goings-on as this opening sequence is plagued with clumsy continuity errors and confusing montage rhythms. The opening sequence, which like most great mysteries gives you everything you need to know, is already clumsy and convoluted. Running at nearly two and a half hours, it feels its length and takes its time to get started up. The transplantation of the era creates a kind of parable, and the threads that connect the various levels of egocentric officials and disregard for the poor to the current moment still feels salient. As with most noir stories, the murder leads our detective down a path that draws him into a greater conspiracy of corruption in local borough politics. While the book is set in contemporary New York, Norton transplanted it to the 1950s because he felt it had a film noir vibe. Norton first read Lethem’s book in 1999 and has worked 20 years to bring it to the screen. In the grander scheme of things, then: if only Lionel Essrog’s story, adapted from a novel by Jonathan Lethem, was not written and directed by Ed Norton. If only he weren’t afflicted with neurological problems if only his mother didn’t die if only he weren’t so alone. If only he were paying attention, maybe his friend wouldn’t have died. Of all his verbal tics, his frequent outbursts of “if” are the most foreboding. He also has a photographic memory, his gift that makes him a valued asset in spite of his inability to blend into a crowd. Essrog, however, suffers from Tourette’s and OCD compulsions, which challenge the traditional norms of the private dick genre. A private detective is gunned down in an altercation, and one of his associates, Lionel Essrog (Ed Norton), sets out to solve the case. In the opening sequence of Motherless Brooklyn, there’s a murder.