The detective and his favorite tree. He later married it, and then, in a ghastly fit of madness, chopped it down and made it into a dining room table. Their children were horrified.
Marlowe (2022) I watched, oh, one or two years ago, made a note of it in my usual way for review … and promptly forgot about it. A few months ago I noticed it, looked it up, said, Oh, that, and have been ignoring it ever since.
Which may tell you all you really need to know.
But to finish up, it’s not based on any of Chandler’s original Marlowe stories, but rather a derivative from 2014 which I never read. It’s also derivative, at least in my limited experience, of the retro movement of today, a fascination by Gen Xers and others of that age with previous American generations. You probably have heard, but it seems to involve fine arts, such as music and the hardware used to reproduce, especially phonographs and vinyl records; for those of my age, I have yet to hear of 8-track tapes making a comeback.
And that’s how this sort of felt. Liam Neeson in old detective clothes – yet, maybe, not really living in them.
There’s a coherent, even potentially interesting mystery that he’s investigating, but why he doesn’t end up dead is a bit of a mystery in itself. And the rest of it?
Forgotten.
If you like old mystery movies starring the likes of Bogie, you may want to give this a look, just out of comparative interest. Figuring out why the old ones were better than this is an interesting academic exercise.
