Cornflower blue does not belong in a neo noir! Images courtesy Warne Bros. Pictures.
5/10 Motherless Brooklyn feels less like a movie and more like Edward Norton and his pals playing dress-up, and that’s not the worst concept for a movie I’ve ever heard of.
New York City, 1957- Lionel Essrog (Norton, who also writes, directs and produces), Frank Minna (Bruce Willis) and the rest of Minna’s firm grew up together at the local Catholic orphanage during the Great Depression, served together in World War II and now all work together at Minna’s private detective agency/car rental service. Minna is seen as a mentor and quasi-savior by all of them, and Essrog, who sees himself as otherwise unemployable due to his debilitating case of Tourette Syndrome but is used extensively by Minna for his incredible photographic memory, particularly reveres him.
That’s why Essrog is particularly devastated when Minna, who is notoriously tight-lipped about his cases even with employees, is murdered by a client early in the film, shot in the back with his own weapon. Essrog, with no help from his co-workers and now forced to do the front-facing work he’d been kept clear of for years, resolves to figure out who killed Minna, a quest that uncovers extensive corruption in the city’s development organizations lead by Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin), an thinly veiled caricature of New York City’s real-life master planner Robert Moses.
Reel Entropy 