Motherless Brooklyn 2019 123movies

Watch: Motherless Brooklyn 2019 123movies, Full Movie Online – Set against the backdrop of 1950s New York, “Motherless Brooklyn” follows Lionel Essrog (Norton), a lonely private detective afflicted with Tourette’s Syndrome, as he ventures to solve his friend’s murder. Armed only with a few clues and the powerful engine of his obsessive mind, Lionel unravels closely-guarded secrets that hold the fate of the whole city in the balance..
Plot: New York City, 1957. Lionel Essrog, a private detective living with Tourette syndrome, tries to solve the murder of his mentor and best friend, armed only with vague clues and the strength of his obsessive mind.
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Ratings:

	6.8/10 Votes: 57,905
	64% | RottenTomatoes
	60/100 | MetaCritic
	N/A Votes: 1212 Popularity: 18.444 | TMDB

Reviews:

**_Looks great and is well acted, but the pacing is turgid_**

>_I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettos without removing people as I hail the chef who can make omelettes without breaking eggs._

– Robert Moses; Open letter to Robert Caro, refuting many of the claims in Caro’s biography of Moses, _The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York_ (August 26, 1974)

>_Have you ever felt, in the course of reading a detective novel, a guilty thrill of relief at having a character murdered before he can step onto the page and burden you with his actual existence? Detect__ive stories always have too many characters anyway. And characters mentioned early on but never sighted, just lingering offstage, take on an awful portentous quality. Better to have them gone._

– Jonathan Lethem; _Motherless Brooklyn_ (1999)

In his introduction to _The Wire: Truth Be Told_ (the official companion book to the greatest TV show ever made), series creator David Simon writes that although it may appear to be a cop show, in reality, _The Wire_ is “_about politics and sociology, and, at the risk of boring viewers with the very notion, macroeconomics._” In a similar(ish) manner, Jonathan Lethem’s 1999 novel _Motherless Brooklyn_ may appear to be an old-fashioned private-eye noir, but in reality, it’s about gentrification, institutionalised racism, political corruption, and how such things are woven into New York City’s historical fabric. It’s about how the city of today was built on the cruelty, prejudice, lies, and unchecked power of yesterday.

Lethem’s novel is a fascinating and quintessentially postmodern narrative, fracturing the relationship between the physical and the temporal by taking the sensibilities of 1950s gumshoe noir and supplanting them into an end-of-century _milieu_. On the other hand, the 1957-set film is more literal, less interested in playing with form. Written for the screen, produced, directed by, and starring Edward Norton, this two-decades-in-the-making passion project asks how much corruption are we willing to forgive and whether truth and ideals even matter in a world in which there’s a direct confluence between power and amorality. However, far too in reverence to films such as Roman Polański’s _Chinatown_ (1974) and Curtis Hanson’s _L.A. Confidential_ (1997), _Motherless Brooklyn_ is your average noir mystery – a likable but flawed protagonist begins what seems like a fairly straightforward investigation, only to be led down a rabbit hole of corruption and power games, until he’s in the midst of an elaborate political conspiracy. And whilst it’s aesthetically impressive (the period detail drips off the screen) and the acting is universally excellent, the film can be spectacularly on the nose and didactic. It also moves at a snail’s pace, and Norton is never really able to generate any sense of urgency, making the whole thing feel laborious, and, ultimately, rather pointless.

New York City, 1957. World War II veteran Frank Minna (Bruce Willis) runs a small PI firm, employing Tony Vermonte (Bobby Cannavale), Danny Fantyl (Dallas Roberts), Gilbert Coney (Ethan Suplee), and Lionel Essrog (Norton), all of whom Minna rescued from an abusive orphanage when they were still children. He’s most fond of Essrog, who suffers from what we know today as Tourette Syndrome – uncontrollable tics and the tendency to blurt out random words and phrases, which becomes worse when he’s nervous. However, he also has a photographic memory. As the film begins, Essrog and Coney are listening in on a clandestine meeting between Minna and unidentified parties. When the meeting becomes contentious, tragedy strikes, and although none of Minna’s staff know who he was meeting or what he was investigating, Essrog determines to get to the bottom of the case, slowly unearthing a labyrinthine conspiracy involving local government, urban redevelopment plans, and housing relocation programs. Along the way, he encounters Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), an activist campaigning against gentrification; Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin), a powerful real estate developer who plans to expand New York’s road network and build multiple new bridges despite the fact that to do so, he’ll have to demolish several lower-income neighbourhoods; Paul (Willem Dafoe), an engineer who has a history with Randolph; Gabby Horowitz (Cherry Jones), the leader of the activist group of which Laura is a member; a brilliant but mysterious jazz musician (Michael K. Williams); Julia Minna (Leslie Mann), Frank’s wife; William Lieberman (Josh Pais), Randolph’s right-hand man; Lou (Fisher Stevens), one of Randolph’s thugs; and Billy Rose (Robert Wisdom), Laura’s father and the owner of a jazz club at the centre of the mystery.

Anyone familiar with the novel will immediately recognise that Norton has made sweeping changes, not just in terms of relocating the story to 1957 (thus making explicit what was so indelibly postmodern in the book), but so too in terms of plot and character. The most significant addition is Moses Randolph, who’s clearly based on New York’s so-called “master builder” Robert Moses, the man largely responsible for the city’s high-way infrastructure, the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers to LA, the development of Long Island, whose controversial philosophies regarding urban redevelopment continue to be implemented all over the world, and who once held 12 civil service titles (including President of the Long Island State Park Commission, Chairman of the New York State Council of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Secretary of State of New York, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, and Commissioner of the New York City Department of City Planning) despite never being elected to public office. Operating with almost complete autonomy from regulatory oversight, Moses was a narcissist obsessed with power, and an amoral racist, and so too is the character in the film. Indeed, although the film is ostensibly based on Lethem’s novel, it contains more than a hint of Robert Caro’s magisterial Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Moses, _The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York_ (1974).

_Motherless Brooklyn_’s most obvious strength is its aesthetic, about which I really can’t say enough. The production design by Beth Mickle (_Drive_; _Only God Forgives_; _Lost River_), the art direction by Michael Ahern (_Stake Land_; _Arbitrage_; _The Drop_), and the costume design by Amy Roth (_Top Five_; _Two Night Stand_; _Indignation_) are all exceptional, contributing to the nuanced and immersive period-specific tone, with the milieu feeling lived-in and completely authentic.

Norton’s direction is, for the most part, straightforward and unfussy, but one visual motif he uses several times is shooting directly from Essrog’s POV. First-person shots in cinema are infrequent enough that when a director uses the technique a few times, it stands out. What’s most interesting here is when Norton uses it – three scenes in which Essrog is lying on his back either currently being beaten up, or having recently been beaten up. It’s a nice (if somewhat unsubtle) directorial choice, drawing us directly into Essrog’s experience, but only when he’s at his most vulnerable. On the other hand, the tonally inconsistent use of dream scenes is far less effective, feeling as if they’re from another film entirely.

In terms of the decision to set the film in the 50s, it actually makes sense. One of the reasons the novel works so well is because the modern setting clashes with the mannerisms of the characters, the style of the dialogue, the cadences of the plot, all of which are straight out of classic 40s and 50s noir. The effect of this is quintessentially postmodern – a self-reflexive pastiche that’s drawn from both the 50s and the 90s, and yet which belongs to neither. And although this works tremendously on the page, Norton argued (correctly, I think) that to try to replicate this on film – have the story set in 2019 (or even 1999), but told in the manner of a classic noir – wouldn’t work, as it would send mixed and confusing messages to the audience.

And so, he simply relocated the story to the time-period which underpins the style of the novel. With this in mind, the film features many of the trappings of classic noir – the world-weary private eye, the laconic voiceover speaking directly to the audience from an unspecified point in time, the seemingly important clues which ultimately lead nowhere, the seemingly irrelevant clues which ultimately lead somewhere, the smooth (so smooth) jazz score, the smoky (so smoky) jazz clubs, the chiaroscuro lighting (albeit very restrained), the antagonist who seems to see all, the political corruption. There’s even a scene in which Essrog finds an address written on a pack of matches. About the only thing missing is a femme fatale, although there is a woman who may (or may not) know more than she’s letting on.

For all its thematic importance and laudable aesthetic aspects, however, I found _Motherless Brooklyn_ disappointing. For one thing, there’s the pacing, which is so lacking in forward-momentum that the story is practically somnolent. The narrative is unfocused and flabby, needing at least one more editorial pass, occasionally doubling back on itself and wasting time giving the audience information we already possess. Partly because of this, it’s a good 20 minutes too long (at least), and much of it feels like padding – characters that do nothing, clues that lead nowhere, scenes which don’t advance the story or develop the characters. I understand Norton wanted to let the material breath (the novel is around 300 pages), but there’s a difference between giving the characters and themes room to develop and stalling for the sake of it, and so much of the film feels like the latter.

There’s also a significant disconnect between the politics and the detective story. In _Chinatown_, everything feels organic – the personal and the political are intertwined, with the political elements never feeling artificially shaped so as to fit a generic template, or the genre structure never feeling artificially bolstered with extraneous political elements. In _Motherless Brooklyn_, however, Norton is never really able to integrate the two, leading to a kind of identity crisis, with the film unable to find a comfortable middle ground – in trying to be both a noir mystery and a societal commentary, it ends up as neither. Another issue is that because the novel features 50s values displaced into the last years of the century, the endemic racism is deeply disturbing – society today is more enlightened about such things, but here’s a novel in which characters are acting like it’s 40 years prior despite being set in a modern _milieu_. This is a vital part of Lethem’s postmodernist deconstruction of power structures. However, with the film set in the actual 1950s, the racism just comes across as period-appropriate window dressing, losing virtually all of its thematic potency.

An old-fashioned detective story with a lot on its mind, Norton’s passion for the material is self-evident. However, that passion hasn’t translated into an especially good film. Void of almost any tension, although it looks great, _Motherless Brooklyn_ fails to unify its genre elements and its political preoccupations, resulting in a film unsure of its own identity and unable to make us care about much of what it depicts.

It’s a difficult task to pace a noir for a modern audience, and you can feel the two and a half hour runtime. The story is interesting and the parallels to America in the present day are welcomed, but there isn’t enough tonal balance to contrast all the shadowy moodiness. The plot is on the more convoluted side, and you’d imagine that with it being a story about following a trail of clues, ‘Motherless Brooklyn’ would reward repeat viewings – but I’m not sure I would optionally sit through all of it again. There is nothing inherently wrong with this film, bar some odd edits and framing choices, and Norton tackles the material fairly well, creating a great tribute to the noir era of filmmaking. It sometimes treads the line of parody rather than homage, but for anyone in the mood for crime mystery in the vein of ‘Chinatown’ or ‘L.A. Confidential’, this will absolutely hit the spot.
– Joel Kalkopf

Read Joel’s full article…
https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-motherless-brooklyn-a-neo-noir-set-in-1950s-new-york

Great Acting
Edward Norton has Tourette’s Syndrome, which comes out when he is stressed, which does not include driving a car, or getting into a gunfight or walking into a strange location when you expect them to kill you. He works for Bruce Willis, who runs a detective agency out of Brooklyn. Willis gets kidnapped and shot, so Norton is the man in the shop who is supposed to track down the killer. This leads him on a tour of an alternate 1956 New York City, which seems to be populated by great actors like Willem Dafoe, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Cherry Jones, Bobby Cannavale and Alec Baldwin as a megalomaniac closely modeled on Robert Moses. One of them is the bad guy. Guess which and why…. I had it figured out four minutes before Norton did, but then, I don’t have Tourette’s. Still, that means it’s a fair mystery…. not who, but why.

Mostly, though, it’s a chance for actors to strut their stuff, and none more so than Norton, who besides having Tourette’s has an eidetic memory, smokes pot to control his symptoms, and will never be rich. No one seems to be put off by his tics, including touching women, making comments which are mildly lewd, making noises while jazz musicians play, and in one scene where he is trying to light a lady’s cigarette, repeatedly lighting a match and blowing it out before it can get to the cigarette. Everyone is astonishingly enlightened, except, of course, Baldwin. Being evil, he hates poor people, and Blacks in particular.

Good acting, but when I want to visit 1956 New York City, I don’t want everyone there to be from 2019. Still, some great acting, some great locations, and the CGI recreation of Penn Station revives my anger towards the morons who tore it down.

Boroughtown
Employing at least half a dozen incidentals and characters from Chinatown (1973) Ed Norton saddled with a case of Tourettes channels Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes in this overlong detective that supposedly takes place in the late 50s while borrowing liberally from other periods. Wearing many hats both literally and figuratively the auteur/director draws a split decision with his excellent choice in hats.

Sam Spade’s partner is whacked by triggermen who may be in the employ of legendary NY planning commissioner Robert Moses (Alec Baldwin) who is destroying black neighborhoods when Miles Davis (Michael Williams) comes to the rescue, kind of; the players are all very reasonable facsimiles. It makes for the film’s greatest mystery, how do they pull it off without being sued?

Norton’s direction is sluggish as the film plods along with overlong scenes at a club and a pace killing heart to heart with the female lead. He even seems to sabotage his suspenseful moments by being repetitive in situations while his vintage autos convey an artificial look with their with showroom glow still in tact as they tool around Queens and Brooklyn. A smarmy, obnoxious music score does not help matters.

Norton’s tic is like a scratch on an album you’re expecting after a few listens as he overloads scenes with introspective close-ups of himself, the film’s meter running into overtime. Baldwin as the bellicose Moses blowing smoke through his nose is all flat bluster. Wilhelm DaFoe playing his brother is a hammy crank while the rest of the cast looks dull, acts depressed. Motherless Brooklyn is a moody mess.

Other Information:

Original Language en
Runtime 2 hr 24 min (144 min)
Budget 26000000
Revenue 18377736
Status Released
Rated R
Genre Crime, Drama, Mystery
Director Edward Norton
Writer Edward Norton, Jonathan Lethem
Actors Edward Norton, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Alec Baldwin
Country United States
Awards 2 wins & 15 nominations
Production Company N/A
Website N/A

Technical Information:

Sound Mix Dolby Digital
Aspect Ratio 1.85 : 1
Camera Arri Alexa Mini, Cooke Panchro/i Classic and S4 Lenses, Arri Alexa XT, Cooke Panchro/i Classic and S4 Lenses
Laboratory N/A
Film Length N/A
Negative Format Codex
Cinematographic Process ARRIRAW (3.4K) (source format), Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format)
Printed Film Format D-Cinema