Motherless Brooklyn

Loosely adapted from Jonathan Lethem’s 1999 novel (and shifting the timeline from the 1990s to the '50s), Edward Norton’s film, which he wrote and directed as well as starring in, aims to do for New York what Roman Polanski did for Los Angeles in Chinatown—create an iconic tale of urban corruption in the form of a classic gumshoe thriller. In the end it doesn’t manage to match its model, but its ambition and craftsmanship are admirable. Norton plays Lionel Essrog, an investigator afflicted with Tourette syndrome. When his protector and mentor (Bruce Willis) is killed, Lionel takes it upon himself to track down the perpetrators. His inquiries link the murder to the extensive urban renewal of the era, and specifically to Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin), a fictionalized stand-in for New York’s master planner Robert Moses, whose lust for power is unquenchable and whose projects to modernize the city have a decidedly racist tone. They also lead him to Laura (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the beautiful daughter of a Harlem jazz club owner involved in the neighborhood-preservation movement. The circuitous route the film takes to a conclusion that combines cynicism (or realism) with bittersweet hopefulness can be confusing, but with a superb performance by Norton and a supporting cast that also includes Willem Dafoe, Cherry Jones and Bobby Cannavale, it proves a consistently engrossing—and handsomely mounted—journey through a labyrinth of moodily period deception and deceit. Recommended. (F. Swietek)