Review: God’s Pocket

Set in the late 70s, the title refers to a working-class town in Philly full of petty crims and the like. God’s Pocket, my arse it seems. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a small-time crook who along with a butcher pal (John Turturro) pulls off a heist…of a meat truck. Meanwhile, Hoffman’s dipshit moron son (Caleb Landry Jones) mouths off to an elderly African-American co-worker one too many times while working construction, and ends up a little bit dead for it. His mother (Christina Hendricks) is overcome with grief and sorrow, and demands that husband Hoffman find out how this happened, even though the other construction workers band together to call it an accident. She feels there’s more to it than that, but no one seems to want to help…because they know the deceased was a major knob who deserved his fate. Also turning up in town is washed-up journalist Richard Jenkins, who earns the entire close-knit community’s ire for writing a story about the incident and getting it all wrong. Now he comes back to get the real scoop, but they already hate the guy for writing about ‘God’s Pocket’ without being what they consider a local (Nor is Hoffman really, as he wasn’t born locally) and painting them as lowlifes, crims, and thugs. He goes to interview Hendricks and…well, have you seen Hendricks’ cleavage? Then you probably know what happens next. Seriously, best cleavage in the business bar none (Oh, if only Russ Meyer were still alive…). Eddie Marsan plays a local mortician who isn’t particularly impressed when Hoffman loses the money set aside for the funeral…gambling on a ‘sure thing’ that proves anything but. Hoffman ends up having to put his son’s body in the back of the truck, which doesn’t go well when he tries to sell the truck.  Veteran actress Joyce Van Patten has a choice cameo as Turturro’s Aunt, who may be old but I certainly wouldn’t mess with her.

 

The directorial debut of actor John Slattery (TV’s apparently brilliant “Mad Men”) and one of the last screen appearances by the late and extraordinarily talented Philip Seymour Hoffman is an interesting, downbeat film from 2014 based on a Pete Dexter (“The Paperboy”) novel. It’s a small film, and some might consider it a bit slight, but it reminded me a lot of the films of the 70s, actually. Films like “Bloodbrothers”, “Five Easy Pieces”, and “Blue Collar” all came to mind for me, as well as the more recent “Mystic River” and early Scorsese. It’s the kind of thing you could imagine Keitel, De Niro or Nicholson in back in the 70s. And yet, it’s got its own thing going on as well. For starters, it has a dark sense of humour, especially whenever Eddie Marsan is around. This guy was born to play a mortician and he gets all of the laughs as a man purely interested in the bottom dollar and nothing else. Richard Jenkins is also brilliant as a sleazy, boozing hack journo with just a bit of humanity to him. There’s also sturdy support from John Turturro and a memorable role for Joyce Van Patten, in the kind of part that in the 70s would’ve gone to Shelley Winters for sure.

 

Co-producer Hoffman, of course is a sturdy anchor for the whole thing. He looks in absolutely horrid shape, but let’s just assume it’s the character, who is kind of a wreck really. Co-written by Slattery himself along with Alex Metcalf, it’s a shame this one has such a low-profile, it’s solid, melancholic stuff. The film may be a bit slight and downbeat, and some may find the tone wavers too jarringly for their liking (Critics have found it off-putting). I get that, but it’s never boring and the cast is terrific. I kinda liked it.

Damn it Phil…why? WHY??

 

Rating: B-