MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN (2019)

Like a butcher grinding various meats together as meatloaf mix, writer/director/star Edward Norton minces Jon Lethem’s novel with equal parts CHINATOWN and (presumably) original Ed Norton for this grandly conceived vanity project.  It’s 1950s Brooklyn, Norton’s a junior private dick . . . with Tourette’s Syndrome.  Yikes!  (The verbal ticks, involuntary jerks, and here, compensating bear-trap memory catnip for a Oscar nom’d actor.)  When mentor Bruce Willis goes down after a mystery meeting, Norton spends the next two-plus hours following scraps of evidence that lead to a Jazz Club in Harlem and romance with mixed-race beauty Gugu Mbatha-Raw who’s investigating a racially divisive Public Works kickback scheme that funnels project monies thru a city power broker modeled after real-life NYC land grabbing builder Robert Moses, played by Alec Baldwin and imaginatively named Moses Randolph.*  (Think John Huston’s CHINATOWN land developer.)  Norton’s dutiful direction has the film only occasionally sinking into ‘80s cable-movie pastiche, but it's advancements in CGI work that offer reasonable NYC period atmosphere (nice to see a resurrected Penn Station instead of Grand Central) as the puzzle slowly comes together with every inadvertent (?) swipe from CHINATOWN.  The over-qualified cast of stellar character actors likely means Norton called in lots of favors: Cherry Jones, Willem Dafoe, Fisher Stevens & Bobby Cannavale all hunting up itches to scratch.  Maybe it's why this East Coast CHINATOWN-wannabe runs a self-indulgent fifteen minutes longer than that more complicated West Cost original.  Flaws & all, it's surprisingly watchable.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, CHINATOWN’74.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/READ ALL ABOUT IT: *Norton even gives Baldwin the sort of big explanatory/exculpatory/self-aggrandizing speech John Huston delivered in CHINATOWN, right down to the mystery solving question of secret paternity.  To learn about the real Robert Moses, Robert Caro’s groundbreaking bio THE POWER BROKER.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Odd that Norton’s so dismissive of late 1950s New York Post, a period when its rep and fortunes were at a peak as a famous, commercially successful, Liberal leaning tabloid.  Is Norton confusing it with today’s money-losing Conservative NYPost?