Search - God's Pocket on DVD

B.J. W. (analogkid01) from CHICAGO, IL
Reviewed on 4/12/2024...

Cinema lost a hurricane-caliber force in 2014 with the untimely death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. I haven't seen everything he did, but everything he did was stellar - I can't think of a bad PSH performance, nor do I believe it exists.

"God's Pocket," one of Hoffman's last films, is a small, quiet, short, sad film that's elevated by not only his presence, but also by the talents of Christina Hendricks, Richard Jenkins, and John Turturro. Hoffman plays Mickey Scarpato, a low-level but professional thief inexplicably married to Jeanie (Hendricks), whose pill-popping son dies on a job site under questionable circumstances. Jeanie convinces Mickey that the official story of a "freak accident" is a lie, and pressures Mickey to use whatever means necessary to uncover the truth.

Meanwhile, Mickey has to plan a funeral with an unscrupulous funeral parlor owner, deal with a nosey reporter who's getting a little too close to the story, and keep the money coming in.
The script is based on a novel by Peter Dexter, with some additional writing credits by director John Slattery, who is primarily an actor with 88 acting credits and four directing credits, mostly television. The film suffers from tonal inconsistency which is its biggest problem - some scenes are inappropriately (but at least intentionally) comedic. There are also too many ambiguous morals - why does the journalist's arc conclude the way it does? Why does Mickey's? I suspect the original novel is much smoother in its flow than this film is.

In summary, tonal problems and moral ambiguity are just barely rescued by the cast and their performances. And who knew Joyce Van Patten could handle herself so confidently in a gun fight??

Grade: straight C