Delayed Reaction: God's Pocket

The Pitch: John Slattery directs a listless movie about the people of a working class Philadelphia community.

A few things make this film notable. It's so far the only film directed by John Slattery, better known as Roger Sterling from Mad Men. He directed some great episodes of Mad Men and some good episodes of Love too. This is also one of Phillp Seymour Hoffman's final performances. I believe the film premiered at Sundance shortly before his death. It's not a defining Hoffman performance, but like most of his later work, he's solid at the very least in it. If nothing else, this is one less Hoffman performance that I can save for a rainy day if I want to see something I haven't seen before. One day I'm going to run out of "new" PSH movies and that will be a sad day.

This is a slice of life movie. It jumps around a very good cast of actors you would expect to be available for this. Slattery got his Mad Men co-star Christina Hendricks to join. Hoffman is the biggest name he pulled in. People like Richard Jenkins and John Turturro also seem to be available to lend their services for a few days in a small film. The story doesn't go anywhere, really. It's more of a meditation of life in the town of God's Pocket. The problem is, for that to work as a movie, I need to want to hang out with these characters. In God's Pocket, I didn't. I figured most of the characters out in a scene or two. After that, it went through a lot of familiar beats. I always talk about Sundance movies feeling like short stories and God's Pocket is a great example of this. It's like it's missing a final act, like there's too much build and not enough payoff.

Slattery has a good sense of place for the film. The characters would've been interesting with more to do. I think the film is close to being pretty engaging. It's just missing that "secret sauce" that would pull it together. Like, if this was a Coen Brothers movie, I could see these pieces coming together to make something interesting. I'll definitely look for anything Slattery directs in the future.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend