The review of the movie ‘Marlowe’: Neil, nor Jessica can save you

2023-05-16 02:00:00

I thought (and so I wrote it) that the worst film that Zinemaldia had seen in the past was the one that later filled rooms and more rooms, ‘The crooked lines of God’. I apologize. I kneel before the tomb of the author of the inspiring novel, Luca de Tena, and (almost) withdraw my words.

I made a mistake. Only by a few tenths of valuation, but I was wrong. Because? Quite simply, the gods took pity on me and prevented me from contemplating ‘this’ in September.

• Address:
  
  Neil Jordan

• Script:
  
  William Monahan based on a novel by John Banville based on the character created by Raymond Chandler

• Photography:
  
  Xavi Gimenez

• Music:
  
  David Holmes

• Interpreters:
  
  Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, Jessica Lange

• Cine:
  
  Príncipe (VO and dubbed) 109 m

Meaning ‘this’ an adaptation to the screen of ‘The blonde with the black eyes’, signed by the magnificent John Banville who stops being so when he becomes Benjamin Black and fiddles with Chandler’s creatures. ‘This’ is directed (or at least signed) by the author of ‘In the company of wolves’ or ‘Game of tears’. ‘This’ smells like singe from the first scene. The light, as much as it is the work of the director of photography of ‘The Machinist’, is flat, without textures, without volumes.

Detextured. Like everything else, the mise-en-scène, the scenarios (pure rigging…), the composition of shots… Everything. ‘This’ is played by the thin Neeson who, of course, will never be Marlowe, the detective from ‘The Big Sleep’. ‘This’, no matter how much they want us to believe that it happens in Hollywood, doesn’t even come close to hitting the mark. ‘This’ was filmed in Barcelona because ‘this’ is a co-production (don’t ask me why) between Ireland, France and Spain.

The costumes, the art direction, the production design of ‘this’ look so spotless and neat that no one can believe that in ‘this’ people get involved in everything and are tortured, raped, massacred. In ‘this’ Jessica Lange (‘Feud’!) appears but not even she can save ‘this’. So sorry, Oriol Paulo, there are more crooked lines than yours.