Marlowe

Liam Neeson is a strongly capable actor whose committed performances are nearly always wasted on incomprehensible messes of films, and this latest one is no exception.

In fact, Marlowe wastes its entire talented cast AND a skilled production design crew on a woefully by-the-numbers crime story that is frustratingly clumsy in how it delivers information to the audience.

Most of the story consists of exposition-heavy, dialogue-driven scenes that are slapped together with editing that leaves it unclear how and why characters get from one place to the next. Much of the information we receive from the dialogue ends up being meaningless to the story anyway, and it just winds up being a confusing mess that left me feeling nothing.

Not a single moment is really dedicated to letting us know who the characters are, or even what their needs and goals are. It's over 100 minutes of meandering from one scene to the next without ever knowing why we're here or where we're trying to go.

Confusing, bloated, corny, emotionally bereft, and pointless. Just like most other Neeson flicks of the past decade.