Motherless Brooklyn is a crime based drama. The 144 minutes running film is based on a private detective suffering from Tourette’s syndrome. He tries to find out the real murderer of his only friend cum mentor.
The director and the writer of ‘Motherless Brooklyn’ know how to dramatically detach from its source. Edward Norton chose the National Book Award-winning novel to convert into a movie.
Jonathan Lethem is the original writer of the novel. He aims to focus the novel about a lonely detective named Lionel Essrog. He suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome. The protagonist acts as a reporter and takes up on the investigation.
The case is about a murder. Bruce Willis’ Frank Minna was the surrogate father of Lionel, who is being murdered. He took Lionel and some other boys from an orphanage and trained them hard to become gumshoes. Daniel is seen to fight against a powerful estate agent.
As the story unfolds, Lionel finds out about some conspiracy about the criticization of New York city’s gentrification. This gentrification occurred back in the 20th century. The novel showed the set up of the 1980s. However, director Norton changed the story to set in 1959.
Norton introduced a playful, with retro-themed setup and showed a tough guy Dashiell. His affection portrayed as raw and organic. But, this caused the film to look less fact-based. The idea of sliding away from the original story can be considered to be both a good decision and a bad one.
This can be decided by how much faith you put up with the original story. Edward Norton mixed the original novel with Robert’s classic ‘The Power Broker’.
The cast of the movie includes Norton himself, Bruce Willis, Leslie Mann, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Willem Dafoe in the leading roles.
The execution and conviction of the film is perfect. Unfortunately, it gets a collapse on its political facts and insights. Edward seems to celebrate the protagonist’s underdog character by establishing a monument in his honor.