It's been 45 years since anyone watched Philip Marlowe solve crimes in a movie, and now Neil Jordan's Marlowe places Liam Neeson among a unique cohort of actors who have played the famous literary detective, from the Golden Age of Hollywood to the gritty '70s. Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe is considered one of the most well-known antiheroes in crime fiction, beginning with the hard-boiled variety that rose to prominence in the '20s. Characteristic of protagonists in the genre, Marlowe is an honest gumshoe operating in a corrupt world, often seen as naive and chaste by those around him but a dogged pursuer of the truth no matter the personal cost.

Marlowe uses Chandler's beloved private eye but takes its plot from another author's book "The Black-Eyed Blonde," a 2015 novel by John Banville that focuses on the sudden disappearance of sordid raconteur Niko Peterson. Unlike film noir movie flop Nightmare Alley,...