Movies are rated: Avoid, Recommended, Highly recommended and Must see.Michelle MacQueen is a USA Today bestselling author of love. The first person to bring an image or hard copy of this review to Starlight Cinema Taupō qualifies for a free ticket to Marlowe. Hendricks reveals he’s been part of faking Peterson’s death and that he’s after Peterson, his former drug courier, who stole a large amount of cocaine.įrom that point on it’s a tale of revenge, film studio reputation, kidnapping, murder and mayhem in which Marlowe and Cedric show themselves to be the only ones who can distinguish right from wrong. Enter drug lord Lou Hendricks (Alan Cumming) and his huge henchman Cedric (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje).

In flashbacks, we see Peterson as a prop master at Pacific Film Studios and in Mexico as a collector of bric-a-brac, including a weird plaster mermaid. For tantalisingly unclear reasons, Cavendish hires Marlowe to find a former lover, Nico Peterson (François Arnaud), who has disappeared. He mumbles, “I’m too old for this game”, but he’s a red-blooded man, who has to make an effort to remain professional in the face, the beautiful seductive face, of Cavendish, as she wishes to be known.Ĭavendish is an heiress to an oil fortune, a fortune now apparently controlled by the mother. He’s a bit of a lost soul, a far cry from the action man of many recent Liam Neeson films, until he swings his first punch. Marlowe is first seen in a Sam Spade-style office, smoking of course, those dimpled glass panels in the door. Who are the apparently jealous film star mother Dorothy Quincannon (Jessica Lange) and her glamorous daughter Clare Cavendish (Diane Kruger)? What are they really up to? Surely it’s not all about the missing man the daughter Clare Cavendish asks PI Marlowe to find? Chinatown comes to mind and the ever-present undercurrents of Tennessee Williams. Set in Bay City in 1939, where the main industry is filmmaking, the film starts in typical film noir style with a private eye being hired by a mystery woman. The film follows the book’s rhythm: slow-slow-quick-wham-slow and picks up on the listless, world-weariness of Private Investigator Marlowe (Liam Neeson). It’s a new version of the classic Raymond Chandler Marlowe stories, based on John Banville’s 1994 novel, The Black-Eyed Blonde.īanville, writing as Benjamin Black, created a story that is a bit of a riddle, with a lead character who is an enigma. Irish director Neil Jordan ( The Crying Game, 1992) has teamed up with Irish writer John Banville, Irish screenwriter William Monahan and Irish actor Liam Neeson, his 100th film, to give film buffs and older audiences a trip down film noir memory lane.

The Black-Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black