It’s been 20 years since Jonathan Lethem published his award-winning noir novel “Motherless Brooklyn.” Edward Norton has been trying to make it into a movie for almost as long. It’s finally arrived — now recast from a modern-day setting into the 1950s and with a largely different plot, the film captures the spirit of the book’s unusual narrator and its love for the titular borough.
Lionel Essrog (Norton, who also directs and wrote the screenplay) is, in many ways, your standard gumshoe narrator; the big difference is he has Tourette’s syndrome, which causes startling verbal outbursts and the compulsion to touch things — and, more inconveniently, people — repetitively. Tourette’s wasn’t a widely known disorder in the ’50s, and Essrog describes how the nuns at his Catholic orphanage tried to beat it out of him, thinking he was possessed.
The plot’s set in motion by the murder of Essrog’s boss, Frank Minna (Bruce Willis, not really trying his hardest), eventually leading Essrog to the office of Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin, in somewhat familiar real estate blowhard mode). He’s a thinly veiled stand-in for Robert Moses, the mid-20th century New York City planner with an all-consuming love for freeways, cars and the wealthy.
Norton’s working with a great cast, including Willem Dafoe as Randolph’s brother, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a crusading lawyer, Cherry Jones as a community organizer and Bobby Cannavale as another of Minna’s employees. One of the film’s best scenes sees Essrog at a jazz club, where a musician’s (Michael K. Williams) trumpet stylings perfectly match the jumpy rhythms in the detective’s brain.
Norton has always gravitated to oddball roles and seems to particularly relish tics — think back to the prisoner role that made him a star in 1996’s “Primal Fear.” I’d be curious to hear what the Tourette’s community thinks of his performance here, but he seems to do a humanizing job of explaining his unusual brain (he’s also got a near-perfect memory) and defusing his outbursts with self-deprecation and humor. At one point he’s trying to light a cigarette for a young woman and can’t stop himself from blowing out the match, time and again.
Norton’s clearly also eager to tell the Robert Moses story — the inherent racism of the city builder’s plan to raze minority communities and build roads to beaches that only those who can afford their own vehicles can access. At almost two and a half hours, “Motherless Brooklyn” could stand to be tightened up, but it’s an engaging take on a genre that can fall easily into hacky cliches. I’d love to see more adventures from Essrog, though I have my doubts about the wide appeal of this labor of love.