Mark Keresman  June 2014

God’s Pocket

        Aside from being a very good movie, God’s Pocket is notable for two particular reasons: It is the directorial debut of John Slattery (Mad Men) and perhaps the last performance by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. It is also a flawed but compelling view of life in a working class Philadelphia neighborhood known by the title.

        This movie is more of a slice-of-life than a plot-driven story, but there are two major parallel but occasionally intertwining plots: Hoffman (also credited as a co-producer) and John Turturro are Mickey and Arthur, two small businessmen with Mob connections and a shared love of horseracing. They “supplement” their incomes by participating in a few hijackings. Mickey’s stepson—from his marriage to Jeanie (Christina Hendricks, also Mad Men)—Leon is a foul-mouthed, obnoxious, and sadistic creep who makes the mistake of antagonizing the wrong guy at work and ends up dead. Leon’s co-workers cover up the incident. Mickey wants to placate his wife’s grief by giving Leon a nice funeral, but how to afford it? Why, by selling stolen meat and betting on a horserace, as you would. Adding savor to this melodrama is Richard Shellburn (the excellent character actor Richard Jenkins) as a Mike Royko-like newspaper columnist, who prowls God’s pocket (the ‘hood) in search of a good story and sex and/or love.

       God’s Pocket is in the continuum of movies about working class characters seemingly trapped in “situations” of their own making (at least in part, whether they’re aware of it or not)—other movies include Trees Lounge, Last Exit to Brooklyn, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, The Iceman Cometh, and Ben Affleck’s The Town. The film has a grubby, downbeat, claustrophobic feel—one gets the impression that even on sunny days, the Pocket gets less light than other parts of the city. Slattery shot the movie in sepia tones that stop just short of oppressively drab. The tone varies throughout, yet in a natural sort of way—there’s somber drama, scathing humor, and unexpected, (brief) gory violence. Some of the best actors are here: Hoffman, Tuturro, Jenkins, Eddie Marsan as a smarmy, weasel-y funeral director, Peter Gerety as every salt-of-the-earth Irish-American bartender you’ve ever seen, plus an almost unrecognizable Joyce Van Patten as Aunt Sophie. Slattery keeps things moving along at a deliberate but brisk pace.

    There were a couple of aspects that were distracting, however. For one, Jenkins’ journalist was something of a babe-magnet—right. A beautiful young female admirer says, “I’d like to see you write your column some time.” Because everybody knows that nothing gets a lady’s love-jones charged like seeing a balding middle-aged gent slaving away on a typewriter. (This one’s old-school.) The part of Jeanie seemed a bit under-written—she (like many moms) was in complete denial about the true character of her son and that’s displayed in abundance but not much else.

    This writer came away with two conclusions: Slattery may indeed have a bright future as a director as well as actor (if you want to see him excel at comedy, watch him as right-wing loon Steve Austin on 30 Rock), and we are all the poorer for the loss of Hoffman. RIP, big guy.

In addition to ICON, Mark Keresman is a contributing writer for SF Weekly, East Bay Express, Pittsburgh City Paper, Paste, Jazz Review, downBeat, and the Manhattan Resident.

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