Marlowe is a 2022 Film Noir crime thriller directed by Neil Jordan. It adapts the 2014 novel The Black Eyed Blonde by John Banville (Pen Name "Benjamin Black") featuring Philip Marlowe, the literary hero created by Raymond Chandler.
In 1939, Philip Marlowe (Liam Neeson) is hired by a heiress (Diane Kruger) to find her missing lover (François Arnaud). Nico Peterson was found dead with his head crushed in front of a corrupt club that caters to the very rich and famous. However, despite his body being identified by his sister, there's questions as to whether or not it was really him. Nico was a low-level studio helper but involved with several women as well as organized crime to a small degree. The Ambassador to England is also implicated among several other highly placed individuals in Hollywood.
The movie also stars Jessica Lange, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Colm Meaney, Daniela Melchior, Alan Cumming, Danny Huston, Seana Kerslake, Ian Hart, and Patrick Muldoon.
It was released on September 24, 2022.
Tropes for the film:
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: To The Black Eyed Blonde where the guy behind finding Nico Peterson was actually Terry Lennox of The Long Goodbye. It was also over recovering a shipment of heroin. Here, it was part of a blackmail scheme cooked up by Clare Cavendish herself.
- Adaptational Heroism: Cedric the chauffeur is just a chauffeur in The Black Eyed Blonde but helps rescue Marlowe and guns down Hendricks in the movie.
- Adaptational Nationality: This Marlowe, unlike the literary version, either is Irish or has strong ties to Ireland.
- Adaptational Villainy: To The Black Eyed Blonde where Clare Cavendish was manipulated by Terry Lennox into seducing Marlowe to get back some missing heroin. Here, it is all part of her plot to blackmail the studios into making her their Vice President. It's implied her mother is on the scheme too
- Alliterative Name: Clare Cavendish.
- Ambiguous Time Period: Despite taking place in 1939, a lot of the story makes a great deal more sense if it took place twenty years later given references to multi-generations of Hollywood, Phillip Marlowe's age being twice that of Mrs. Cavendish, and her mother being a massive film star.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Marlowe saves Cedric's skin, so they team up, despite otherwise being on opposing sides at that point of the story.
- Big Guy, Little Guy: Cedric is a big, Scary Black Man working as a wheel and a muscle for Lou Hendricks, a mousy drug kingpin and criminal mastermind. And while Hendricks isn't really that small, both Marlowe and Cedric make him look tiny by comparison.
- "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Marlowe and Joe have a rather... vitriolic relationship. Each time they parley, it's a lithany of undeclared threats and blackmailing, done in such a way that, if taken out of context, it could genuinely pass as harmless. Probably best seen when Marlowe blackmails Joe - without ever bringing the subject directly - not just by filing a signed report on what he knows, but also by informing all the newspapers in the town about it. Joe pays back by pointing out how easily he can tangle Marlowe into the case as a suspect. They both agree to simply strike a deal rather than try to one-up each other with another veiled threat.
- Bribe Backfire:[Marlowe is about to leave mid-sentence]Dorothy Quincannon: Wait, how dare you?Marlowe: I'm a little confused. I've already been paid.[He tosses the envelope back and continues to walk away]
- The Casanova: Nico was using his good looks and his marginal contacts in the film industry (as a prop guy) to get any lady he wanted - for the sole sake of getting her, then dumping her for another.
- Chairman of the Brawl: After already beating two muscles sent after him, Marlowe declares "Oh fuck it" and smashes a chair on the back of one of them, just for the sake of it.
- Chandler American Time: While being set somewhere in 1939, the many details of the film just don't align right thanks to the implied ages of various characters, making it feel more like it's the late 40s when listening to the dialogues.
- Character Title: Marlowe.
- Contractual Purity: In-universe. Clare was first given to nuns and then set up as a "niece", solely so her mother could continue her movie career specializing in playing virgins who lose that status by the end of the picture - for 15 years.
- Covert Group with Mundane Front: Floyd is running two of those: one a high-class, selective, and elusive club, with a quite literal Hookers and Blow hidden under all that glamour. The other is a regular whorehouse as a side business, but Marlowe is genuinely impressed by how well hidden the fact that it's a brothel is.
- Discreet Drink Disposal: Played absolutely straight. Marlowe suspects his drink has been drugged, so he dumps it into a potted plant, carefully keeps the ice cubes inside the glass, then pretends to consume the last few drops and feigns a drug-induced stupor until he can turn the tables.
- Death by Adaptation: Nico Peterson survives in The Black Eyed Blonde and goes on to become a gigolo. Hendricks, the crime boss, also dies here.
- The Dog Bites Back: Cedric unloads half a drum of a Tommy gun into Lou Hendricks, after Lou starts chewing him out for destroying the drugs hidden in the plaster mermaid. Later dialogues imply that he was planning to do this sooner or later, and that this was just a handy excuse, while the related destruction was wholly intentional, solely to get his boss riled up.
- Driving a Desk: All shots with any of the top-billed actors behind the wheel were done like this. Partially as a homage to an old techniques, partially to make it less obvious the film was not shot in California.
- Everybody Smokes: You can count characters - background extras included - that don't smoke on your fingers.
- Famed In-Story: Dorothy Quincannon, the famous actress in her youth, that everyone is still gushing about.
- Femme Fatale: Pretty much every single female that isn't Hilda, Marlowe's secretary, can qualify, to near-comical results. The trope itself is eventually even discussed by Marlowe and two Femme Fatales that were trying to use him for their games.
- The Film of the Book: Based on the novel The Black-Eyed Blonde by John Banville.
- Film Noir: And a very sleek and stylish one, with all the hallmarks of the genre being in place.
- Fingore: Clare shoots Nico's ring finger off - and accidentally so.
- Fire-Forged Friends: As discussed by Cedric with Marlowe, spilling so much blood together transcends any relationship to a different level.
- Friend on the Force: Joe, who apparently was Marlowe's partner when they were both still on the force. Bernie, when he finally shows up, is revealed as one, too.
- Genteel Interbellum Setting: The story is set in 1939, and doesn't involve the context of The Great Depression.
- Grande Dame: Despite her fame for being a movie star in her youth, elderly Dorothy Quincannon is now a very dignified old lady and very resentful about having to pretend to be squeaky clean for decades, until ultimately Becoming the Mask.
- Greed: Clare's entire motivation. What makes it stand out is the fact she's already a rich, Old Money socialite, and yet wants to simply have more, preferably directly tied to her own name.
- Horrible Hollywood: Half of the dialogues circle around the subject of how exploitative it is and how many naïve young people from all over the country it lures toward itself, only for them to need to "get by somehow" once their test screening goes nowhere and they are stranded. All the while, the few that do get roles, mostly just sleep their way to them. Ultimately, the plot is revealed to be a clever studio takeover by Clare, after she gets rid of blackmailing evidence about a drug ring running in the lot of that studio.
- I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange star together for the first time since Rob Roy (1995).
- Invulnerable Knuckles: Nope. After Marlowe beats the two thugs who were sent after him to the Cabana brothel, in the next scene he's cooling his hands in the water at the nearby beach.
- Lampshade Hanging: Both Marlowe and Cedric —and especially them together— have conversations in which they lampshade genre conventions of a Film Noir. By the end of the story, this shades into Conversational Troping: they are discussing tropes in general, even name-dropping several.
- Lampshaded Double Entendre: Lou Hendricks explains to Marlowe that he's not a member of the Corbata Club—he strictly enters through the rear door. Since he's Ambiguously Gay (and Marlowe's a Snark Knight), he immediately warns Marlowe not to make a crack about that.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The film makes a few nods to the things commonly known about Marlowe novels, especially the various knightly comparisons (which are actually absent in the novels themselves, at least in a such literal form, being merely outside-universe observations).
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Someone drove over poor Nico's head, crushing it into red paste. Marlowe doesn't even deduce but assumes flatly that it's a frame-up for an obvious murder. Not only was he right the whole time, but it was Nico staging his own death, using the body of an overdosed band member from the club as a double.
- Married to the Job: It is after all a Marlowe story, so he's a lonely, aging bachelor who has quite literally nothing better to do than being a private eye.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Inverted. It's a murder that leads to a chain of completely unrelated fighting over even less related merchandise, while the real plot was about an ultimately meaningless blackmail.
- My Beloved Smother: Despite being in advanced age and Clare being close to middle age herself (not to mention married for quite a while), Dorothy Quincannon is very controlling over her daughter's life. That after first sending her into an orphanage and then pretending to everyone that she's her niece, which makes it no wonder they hate each other so much and Clare is so spiteful toward her own mother.
- Nice to the Waiter: Marlowe secures Cedric's help by simply being cordial with him... and saving his life, just for good measure.
- Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds: The corpse attributed to Nico Peterson had its head obliterated to hide not only its identity, but also the fact that the victim didn't die from violence at all, but from a drug overdose.
- Odd Friendship: By the end of the story, Marlowe gets not one, but two of those:
- He and Cedric, after teaming up against Floyd and his goons and saving each other from a pickle. They get along surprisingly well for two men who started as pretty much enemies, or at least on opposing sides of the conflict.
- Clare considers Marlowe to be her friend and confidant, after he helped her get to and murder Nico, stick it to her mother and take over the ambassador's film studio. This one is very one-sided, and Marlowe is baffled by the mere concept of being on friendly terms in the end.
- One-Word Title: Marlowe.
- Period Piece: Takes place in 1939, just as WWII is about to start.
- Playing Drunk: Floyd gives Marlowe a laced drink. The detective pours it into the nearby potted plant, but then plays along with the assumption he's now drugged. And since his captors think he's completely wasted like all the previous victims, they don't bother with the handcuffs until it's too late and Marlowe gets the drop on them.
- Purple Prose: The dialogues try their very best to sound Chandleresque, with... varied results.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: It is quickly revealed that Nico is alive, despite apparently getting his head crushed in a drive-by "accident". When he and Marlowe meet in person, the detective mentions the trope almost verbatim. Ultimately, Clare uses the fact Nico was declared legally dead and for all purposes already cremated to kill the real man in cold blood.
- Red Herring: Just about anything related to the club and its business, the Mexicans or Lou Hendricks has zero connection to the actual plot. But they do make Marlowe's life hard just by being around.
- Robbing the Dead: After killing his boss, Cedric rifles through Lou's pockets, solely to empty his wallet clean.
- Shoot the Hostage Taker: Marlowe shoots the Mexican holding Lynn hostage in the foot.
- Shout-Out: Marlowe mentions that the studio's prop room might contain the Ark of the Covenant or the Maltese Falcon.
- Slipping a Mickey: A Chekhov's Gun when Marlowe overhears the phrase "Mickey Finn" outside, even helpfully translated into pidgin Spanish for the benefit of two (apparently clueless) Mexican killers that he finds slain later. Although it's unlikely that Marlowe himself would have drunk the one handed to him even if he hadn't heard this.
- Smart People Play Chess: And since Marlowe is a lonely bachelor, he plays against himself.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Floyd makes a drink for Marlowe, pouring something into it. Marlowe, despite not seeing the entire act, although he does have a partial view by a reflection, still pours the contents of his glass into a nearby potted plant, and plays along with the assumption the drugging was successful.
- Tap on the Head: Zig-Zagged. On one hand, Marlowe is no worse for wear other than a bloody bruise and a slight headache after receiving one of those. On the other hand, he ends up being knocked out for at least a few hours and has to be woken up.
- Underestimating Badassery: A whole variety of characters severely underestimate what Marlowe is made and capable of. This is especially prominent each time he has to get physical and his opponents are taken by surprise by how spry he is in a brawl despite his age.
- White-Dwarf Starlet: Subverted. Quincannon makes it clear, in no uncertain terms, that she's a very happy has-been and, besides, has more than enough money for the rest of her life, so she left the show business when they stopped hiring her.Dorothy Quincannon: The key to Hollywood, Mr. Marlowe, is knowing when your game is up. Take the money and run, or stay, if you want. But at least take the money.
- Will Talk for a Price: A very subtle example. When a bum notices Marlowe mousing around Nico's house, he mentions that Nico liked to smoke with him. Marlowe, without any delay or word, offers him one of his own cigarettes. Since it happens in such a fluid manner, the bum doesn't even have to stop his monologue to get the bribe.
- Woman Scorned: Marlowe assumes this is the real motivation Clare has in her search for Nico. He's wrong, and she couldn't care less about her former boy toy, but she needs the invoices he has.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: The main characters (Marlowe, Clare and Dorothy) are all played by actors who are noticeably at least 20 years older than their characters would have to be for the events in their lives that they mention to line up.
