New York Freak Show

Motherless Brooklyn3 starsDirector: Edward NortonStars: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Edward Norton, Alec Baldwin, Willem Dafoe, Bruce Willis Duration: 144 minsClass: 15KRS Releasing Ltd

Acclaimed actor Edward Norton also wears the director, writer and producer’s hat in the adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s novel Motherless Brooklyn, a moody noir that sees Norton playing the role of Lionel Essrog. Essrog is an introverted private detective who suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome and finds himself embroiled in murder when his boss, mentor and friend Frank Minna (Bruce Willis) is killed.

Working off minimal clues and putting his obsessive nature to good use, Essrog moves closer to finding Minna’s killers, treading a path that passes through some of Harlem’s hottest jazz clubs via Brooklyn’s poorest slum areas up the completely corrupt higher echelons of power in the New York mayor’s office. Yet not even the highest-ranking men in city hall will stop Essrog from finding out the truth.

When taking on the task of bringing Motherless Brooklyn to the big screen, Norton made quite a few changes – primarily moving the book’s 1990s setting and taking the characters back to the 1950s, thereby giving the...