LIFF review: God’s Pocket

The Louisiana International Film Festival featured an advance screening of the independent drama God’s Pocket, not yet in wide release. Here is 225’s review:

There are some films, solid movies, that leave you walking out satisfied to have experienced a good story well told and yet they don’t really spark a sense of awe at any specific scenes in particular. The whole feels more memorable than the parts.

God’s Pocket, the feature film directorial debut from John Slattery (aka Mad Men’s hard-drinking, fast-quipping ad man Roger Stirling), is very much the opposite. A handful of these scenes of startlingly dark humor and violence are absolutely water-cooler worthy. One sequence had my audience literally cheering out loud—it was that surprisingly emotional and hilarious at the same time. This slimy, down-trodden tale borrows heavily from the Cohen Brothers aesthetic—the excellent John Turturro’s presence here certainly cements that vibe—though it’s tone is slightly more loving toward its characters.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to separate God’s Pocket, with its overarching ruminations on hardship, addiction and struggle—and an opening scene that takes place at a funeral—with the real-life death of its leading actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Hoffman’s character is largely an internal one (perhaps next of kin to his role in Synechdoche, New York), a broken man in a broken relationship wilting in a broken city. Despite his considerable flaws, we root for him, we admire his odd sense of justice and his determination, however faulty it may, to survive. His wife is Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks, a shell-shocked ruby in mourning after a first-act tragedy throws her into emotional limbo.

The supporting cast is superb and natural, chewing scenery just enough to create some deliciously awkward and morbid moments. Richard Jenkins plays a drunkard who was once a brilliant columnist but lost his muse at the bottom of a bottle years ago. When he gets an assignment to cover the death of a young man, his boozy, still-lyrical path collides with Hendricks and Hoffman.

In one of his last performances (along with spy thriller A Most Wanted Man and the upcoming Hunger Games sequels), Hoffman gives his final turn in a “small” film, one that ends a little flat and feels more like a collection of curious, albeit worthwhile, character studies than the grandiose tale of small-town hardship Slattery probably intended it to be.

Still, with expectations in check, God’s Pocket is another chance to see Hoffman at work (his report Turturro is pure gold), and an entertaining dark comedy with a handful of scenes you’ll be telling friends about even weeks later.

Watch the trailer and Hoffman and Hendricks discuss the film below: