There are actors who direct films, and there are those who establish themselves as real-deal filmmakers. In the first category we find John Slattery, a fine actor who, after a respectable career as “that guy,” reached a new level at age 45 thanks to Mad Men. The AMC series was still on the air when Slattery directed his first film, God’s Pocket, in 2014, and he returns now, nearly 10 years on, with the dark comedy Maggie Moore(s). Following his on-screen reunion with Mad Men co-star Jon Hamm in last year’s Confess, Fletch, Slattery here casts the actor in the lead role as Jordan Sanders, a lonely police chief investigating the connection between the murders of two women, each named Maggie Moore.
The first Maggie to die (played by Emily Blunt) is married to Jay (Micah Stock), the owner of a restaurant franchise who plans to become the Howard Schultz of submarine sandwiches. To cut costs, he circumvents the corporate office and purchases expired meat and cheese from his contact, Tony (Derek Basco), who works for a local supplier. When Maggie learns of Jay’s scheme, which involves the exchange of child porn as compensation for the food supplies, he decides to enlist deaf hitman Kosco (Happy Anderson) to frighten her out of going to the police. Things go awry, and Kosco ends up killing Maggie. After Jay learns of another woman with his wife’s name living in the same town, he re-hires Kosco to kill her as a way of covering his tracks.
Maggie Moore(s) inevitably recalls Fargo, what with it having two protagonists—a devious moron in over his head and the police officer investigating his crime—and it treating grisly subject matter in a comic fashion. But unlike Joel and Ethan Coen’s masterpiece, and, for that matter, Slattery’s own God’s Pocket, Maggie Moore(s) lacks a strong sense of place, rendering its southwestern locales flavorless and generic. There’s little in terms of either dialogue or visual detail, beyond a few desert vistas, that distinguishes the setting from any other.
The film’s detective plot, a so-called “howdunnit” in the Columbo style (that is, we see the murder, then watch someone try to solve it), is engaging enough. Jordan puzzles through a number of red herrings, including the second Maggie’s philandering husband (Christopher Denham) and her neo-Nazi former co-worker (Tate Ellington), in the process of figuring out which victim was the real target and why. The dramatic irony inherent in this kind of plot construction is almost always compelling, even if the specific material in this case is roughly on the level of a lesser episode of Monk, and well below that of most of the Coen brothers’ movies.
And then there’s the obligatory love story. While investigating the first Maggie’s murder, Jordan meets her neighbor, Rita (Tina Fey), and later asks the divorcee on a date. Their romance is lackluster on its own, given the tentative way in which they try (and fail) to spark a deep connection, but it also sits uneasily next to the murder plot. This tender-hearted storyline feels like an afterthought, a half-hearted means of adding dimension to Hamm’s cerebral character. It also works to position the film as a closer relative of another actor turned director’s work behind the camera, Macon Blair’s 2017 neo-noir I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, for the way that the story’s center isn’t strong enough for the rest of its disparate parts to hold.
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