Marlowe (2022)

This was Liam Neeson’s 100th film. The line I quoted above was from it. It could have been inspired directly by Liam, himself. Noir films were all the rage in their heyday in the 1940’s and 50’s. Neo-noir, today? Not so much.

The script was quite clever, if you knew what to look out for. Most of the best bits were throw-away lines, hidden in plain sight. The MacGuffin was a mermaid called Serena, hidden early on in the story in an aquarium, but for most part with an unknown purpose. (And, just to remind us, the viewers, of its insignificance, the Maltese Falcon was part of the items lost in the prop fire at the movie studio lot.)

Honestly, I could not see the purpose of bringing back a tried-but-true, tired-but-wasted style of film. Most people alive today would not understand the times in which the film was based: pre-WWII 1939. Los Angeles has had a number of recent films based there, mostly centred around the film industry, including 1997’s L.A. Confidential, which I thought worked much better as a neo-noir story. Maybe it’s time to put this genre out to pasture.

If you want to see the film, yourself, it’s streaming on Prime Video.

Hmm.