'Motherless Brooklyn'

Edward Norton, the director and screenwriter, is the best thing about “Motherless Brooklyn,” a strange yet compelling noir drama. Now if only he could rein in his over-the-top star, Edward Norton.

Norton plays Lionel Essrog, who works as eyes and ears for a private eye, Frank Minna (Bruce Willis) in late-1950s New York, despite Lionel suffering from Tourette’s syndrome. It’s the Tourette’s, and the cascade of tics and blurted-out phrases, that makes Norton’s performance so annoying — and, for a guy who made his bones playing characters with perceived mental disabilities, in “Primal Fear” and “The Score,” it’s also easy to see why Norton wanted to do it.

Frank, Lionel explains in a too-thick narration, rescued Lionel and the other guys at the agency — Tony (Bobby Cannavale), Gilbert (Ethan Suplee) and Danny (Dallas Roberts) — from the orphanage and gave them a job and a purpose. That starts to crumble when, after a busted stakeout, Frank is shot by some thugs and dies. Lionel, who saw Frank as a mentor, decides he’s going to find out what Frank was up to, and see if that can lead Lionel to Frank’s killers.

The trail of clues leads Lionel into a battle over the soul of New York City, being fought on one side by civic activist Gabby Horowitz (Cherry Jones) and on the other by the imperious city planner Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin). These characters are only lightly fictionalized takes on the journalist and firebrand Jane Jacobs and the city builder Robert Moses, and their presence will surprise anyone who read the 1999 Jonathan Lethem novel on which Norton adapted his screenplay.

While digging, Lionel finds two other important figures in the story. One is Paul (Willem Dafoe), a brilliant but unstable engineer with many secrets. The other is Laura (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who rails against Randolph’s so-called “slum clearance” and joins Horowitz’s cause.

Norton steeps “Motherless Brooklyn” in the details of ‘50s New York, where guys in fedoras drive their  tailfin-heavy cars to Harlem clubs to hear bebop jazz. (Michael Kenneth Williams plays a jazzman who befriends Lionel, though the music coming out of his horn is from Wynton Marsalis.) Norton also paces the action well, as Lionel doggedly follows the bread crumbs to an ending that’s not as surprising as a viewer might wish it would be.

Getting past Norton’s tic-filled performance, “Motherless Brooklyn” boasts a strong ensemble, with Baldwin standing out by playing his best role: The power-hungry authoritarian. (It’s not far off from “30 Rock’s” Jack Donaghy or his Trump impersonation.) “Motherless Brooklyn” works better as a meditation on the dangers of limitless power than when Norton remember he’s supposed to be telling a detective yarn.

——

‘Motherless Brooklyn’

★★★

Opens Friday, Nov. 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language throughout including some sexual references, brief drug use, and violence. Running time: 144 minutes.