Directed and co-written by John Slattery, who plays Roger on Mad Men, God’s Pocket (2014) is about city crime, violence and despair in a past decade. Some of what happens is so crazily grotesque that it has elements of comedy, and yet the film ends up being a mite too dark and gloomy. It is also less honest than it thinks it is, being short here and there on necessary verisimilitude. (Why does Jeanie tolerate the smitten newspaper columnist? Why does the truck driver run a red light merely because a frantic schlub is running down the street toward him?)
Slattery does imbue the film with personal vision, though, and such actors as Philip Seymour Hoffman and Richard Jenkins are superb.
