Originally published at: Liam Neeson becomes Raymond Chandler's iconic private eye in the trailer for Marlowe | Boing Boing
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Nobody ever wants to bring back Cadfael. 
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Seeing this swiftly brought on a “Singing Detective” vibe.
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I’m always in for a Chandler picture, but my goodness there are a lot of distracting accents going on there.
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I was hoping this would be some sort of Duckman reboot.
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Cops aren’t very fashionable at the moment and someone has to fight all that crime.
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My only quibble is Marlowe’s age—in the books he’s in his mid-30s to his early 40s, so a 70-year-old Marlowe should be investigating hippies in the late 1960s.
Then again this is Liam Neeson so he can do whatever he wants.
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He’s certainly the tallest Marlow ever. Cautiously optimistic after seeing Neil Jordan’s name. Are we certain 1940’s stripper bars used that much neon lighting?
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Didn’t know there were so many Irishmen in LA… and broken chairs.
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I just read a couple of Chandler Marlowe novels around Christmas and they are so unbelievably racist it kind of takes the shine off the iconic character.
Accent and Irishness of background characters isn’t necessarily out of keeping with the original.
I really hope they address the utterly toxic misogyny and racism though. It’s as bad as Lovecraft.
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That’s what I was expecting with Murder, My Sweet - at more than one point, I was expecting Dick Powell to “aw shucks, hyuk-hyuk” himself into Ken Berry.
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By the 1940s most home phonographs were electric.
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Not sure I agree on that point. Marlowe lives in a very racist (and misogynist) society and Chandler isn’t shy about presenting it that way, but Lovecraft frames miscegenation as an Eldrich horror unto itself.
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Fair point the last one but Chandler and Marlowe’s racism is as breathtakingly broad and deep as Lovecraft from my reading recently. The big sleep and High Window (and a couple of shorts too, with the Continental Agent rather than Marlowe). I missed a lot of it when I read a book as a kid as I didn’t even know the words!
For eldritch horror you can substitute crime to some extent though. As I said I was shocked when I read it recently and it scuppered my plan to read a whole load. I couldn’t enjoy it and it made me feel a bit sick.
But we can take the vibe of the original and remove that and I hope they do.
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I enjoy the world of Cthulhu, and of Marlowe, but the originals have real problems. Maybe someone can take Marlowe’s rich World and do what Matt Ruff did with Lovecraft Country, which was brilliant. I guess you could say Walter Mosley did that? I read a few of his books when I was young around the time I first read a Chandler book.
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I saw a brief glimpse of Colm Meaney!!!
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The Continental Op? That’s Hammett. Maybe a problem for him, as well, and/or he wrote in the same era, about similar settings, as Chandler.
ETA: Agree re: Mosley. When I was reading this thread earlier I thought of what he did with that setting. But thus far I’ve only read (& watched) Devil in a Blue Dress.
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Looks like some of his very particular set of skills, skills he has acquired over a very long career, will be used.
Two blocks from our daughter’s place is an Emagine theater with a private screening room. I had already planned to book it for the new Indy movie for four of us but it looks like I’ll be spending some more cash to see this one as well.
Or I can wait for streaming.
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Doh! Yes of course. Hammet wasn’t as terribly racist either I think. I read some Hammett shots in the library of America editions as well at the same time which melded them in my mind.
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I thought that was what Mr. Monk was all about.
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I wholeheartedly agree that Philip Marlowe as written in the 1930s and 1940s would be a pretty poor role model for 2023.
Of course even back in his day the character wasn’t exactly supposed to be a paragon of virtue.
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