‘Where’s Marlowe?’ Snoops Around in Private-Eye Genre

People keep kicking at the prone form of the private-eye movie genre, but it’s often hard to tell why. Are they trying to wake it up? Finish it off? Or do they just want to make sure that it’s just unconscious and not already dead?

Given that Daniel Pyne, the director of “Where’s Marlowe?,” has in his previous television and movie work shown a warm affinity for crime melodrama, you assume that his movie comes primarily to praise and not to bury the P.I. iconography. But despite its hip “mockumentary” trappings, “Where’s Marlowe?” won’t convince too many people that this once-proud genre has enough get-up-and-go for the new millennium.

The setup, at least, has potential. It starts with “footage” from an epic three-hour documentary on the New York City water system by independent filmmakers Wilt Crawley (Mos Def) and A.J. Edison (John Livingston). The movie goes over like a fat boulder at a festival screening, making the pair believe that there’s probably a better subject waiting for them on the left coast.

Hence “Where’s Marlowe?,” which Wilt and A.J. bill as an inquiry into the so-called real life of the Southern California private investigator. Their subject couldn’t be more perfectly suited for their purposes: a self-styled romantic, prosaically named Boone (Miguel Ferrer), who spends most of his time finding runaway teenage girls, shadowing cheating spouses and strong-arming owners of obnoxious pets. He clings to the dream of finding his own Black Dahlia case.

It’s hard to tell why Boone’s cynical partner, Murphy (John Slattery), is involved with what he calls this “Hardy Boys crap.” But before Wilt and A.J. can get that angle resolved on camera, Murphy gets caught up in a bizarre case of sex and murder. Boone can’t handle a case of such complex and potentially dangerous dimension by himself. So it’s not long before “Where’s Marlowe?” turns, as A.J. puts it, into a “documentary about two documentary guys who are making a documentary about a private eye.”

Pyne, who co-wrote the script with John Mankiewicz, manages to sustain this conceit for a little while. It isn’t long, however, before there’s irreconcilable tension between the satire of “indie” movie pretensions and the muddled mystery plot. Neither of these strains is carried out to a satisfying end, which may have been the point. Still, the droll cast--especially Ferrer, who’s exquisite as a tough-talking dunce--deserved something more fully realized than this.

* MPAA rating: R, for language and a scene of sexuality. Times guidelines: Rough language, some violence, a little sex.

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‘Where’s Marlowe?’

Miguel Ferrer: John Boone

Mos Def: Wilt Crawley

John Livingston: A.J. Edison

John Slattery: Murphy

Paramount Classics presents a Western Sandblast project. Director Daniel Pyne. Producer Clayton Townsend. Executive producers Aaron Lipstadt, John Mankiewicz, Daniel Pyne. Screenplay Daniel Pyne & John Mankiewicz. Cinematographer Greg Gardiner. Editor Les Butler. Costumes Mary Zophres. Music Michael Convertino. Production designer Garreth Stover. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

Exclusively at the General Cinema Avco, 10840 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood, (310) 475-0711.