Marlowe movie review: The Liam Neeson starrer is utterly boring

It starts with the choice of Liam Neeson, the actor who has got a revival late in his career with action films, to play Marlowe. Where his detective needs a dash of mystery, charisma and a certain wounded spirit to blend into the world he is prowling, Neeson is a block of solid, tired, cynical wood, trying desperately to seem interested in the games the women around him are playing.

They are interesting women, by the way. Diane Kruger and Jessica Lange play a daughter and mother duo who may or may not be sleeping with the same men — each insisting that the other wants to just have what she has, literally. It is to find one of those men, a character who keeps flitting between California and Mexico (only so that Mexico can live up to all the cliches of its disrepute), that Diane’s Clare hires Neeson’s Marlowe.

Barely has she gone through the first of the many cigarettes he lights for her that Clare makes a move on him.

But lest you think that all this will amount to an intriguing mix of sex, lies and drugs, and no easy videotapes for evidence, it doesn’t. The idea seems to be around just to lend Marlowe some much-needed desirability.

Movie reviews: Selfiee | Cocaine Bear | The Strays

Marlowe’s best detective quality on display, meanwhile, is his ability to decipher the famous writers whom the people around him keep quoting. Like when Lange’s Dorothy instructs a nervous waiter: “When you make tea, you make tea, and when you make water, you make water.”

“James Joyce!” trills a thrilled Marlowe. And that’s the most excited he will be.

Marlowe movie director: Neil Jordan
Marlowe movie cast: Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, Jessia Lange, Danny Huston, Alan Cumming
Marlowe movie rating: 1.5 stars