The great Edward Norton reached the half-century mark on 8.18.19, or the weekend before last. Which is no biggie, of course, 50 being the new 40 and all. It’s just that his brilliant debut performance in Primal Fear doesn’t feel like it happened all that long ago. (Except it did.) I’ve been thinking of Norton because of the imminent Telluride premiere of Motherless Brooklyn, the ’50s noir that he directed, adapted, produced and stars in. And the roles and films that followed over the next four years — Holden Spence in Everyone Says I Love You, Alan Isaacman in The People vs. Larry Flynt, a jazz gambler in Rounders, a reformed neo-Nazi in American History X, the unreliable narrator in Fight Club — six knockouts if you include Primal Fear.
