God’s Pocket *** (2014, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Turturro, Christina Hendricks, Eddie Marsan, Richard Jenkins, Caleb Landry Jones) – Movie Review

Philip Seymour Hoffman stars in his penultimate completed feature God’s Pocket (2014) as Philadelphia debt collector Mickey Scarpato, whose crazy, thoroughly dislikeable, racist stepson Leon (Caleb Landry Jones) is killed at work in what his co-workers claim is an accident. Mickey’s wife Jeanie (Christina Hendricks) thinks there’s something fishy and demands the truth, leading to people sniffing around, and Mickey finds that trying to bury Leon is a problem. Eddie Marsan plays the troublesome funeral director, Smilin’ Jack Moran.

Actor John Slattery’s feature film directorial debut is a pleasingly offbeat darkly comic drama, with plenty of atmosphere and quirky, amusing characters and scenes. But Slattery’s screenplay (written with Alex Metcalf) makes hard and uncertain work out of adapting Peter Dexter’s novel. The film hovers uncertainly between a black comedy and a thriller, and somehow ends up as a really good version of neither, but nevertheless it is still absorbing enough.

Hoffman’s part requires him to be world weary, which he does alarmingly well. Bethnal Green boy Marsan boy fits surprisingly well into the Philly world of God’s Pocket. John Turturro helps out too as Arthur ‘Bird’ Capezio, fitting in like a glove. Richard Jenkins ditto as washed-up journalist Richard Shellburn, a character whose whole point is he really doesn’t fit in.

I have only faint praise for God’s Pocket but I really don’t want to damn it. It may be a depressing experience but it is still worth trying.

Writer Peter Dexter, born in 1943 in Pontiac, Michigan, is known for Michael (1996), Mulholland Falls (1996) and The Paperboy (2012).

Philip Seymour Hoffman acted in Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, Flawless, Almost Famous (2000), Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), Doubt (2008), and The Master. Tragically, he died on February 2 2014, aged 46, from an apparent drug overdose (acute mixed drug intoxication) in his New York City apartment. Awarded a Best Actor Oscar for the 2005 film Capote, he checked into rehab in May 2013 for heroin use.

His final completed film was A Most Wanted Man (2014), followed by The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2. Hoffman died a week before filming ended and his role was finished with other characters taking his lines.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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