God’s Pocket

From the very first scenes, God’s Pocket makes it clear it won’t be a conventional drama. John Slattery, better known until then as Roger Sterling from Mad Men, embraces a tone that teeters between working-class grittiness and dark comedy — but this balance is shaky at best.

The story centers on Mickey Scarpato, played with understated melancholy by Philip Seymour Hoffman. This was one of his final roles, and the emotional weight he carries is evident — not through outbursts, but through the tired weight in his eyes and gestures. Hoffman doesn’t save the film, but he lends credibility to a man caught in a life that’s already slipped through his fingers.

Alongside him, Christina Hendricks plays Jeanie with the sadness and restlessness the story demands, though her character often floats between regret and a kind of subdued fragility. Richard Jenkins, as the washed-up alcoholic journalist, could’ve been the audience’s voice — but easily slips into a caricature of self-important sentimentality, ironically echoing the very literary pretension the film seems to criticize.

It’s important to note the film’s literary roots — based on the novel by Pete Dexter — and that shows in the screenplay’s forced aphorisms about life, time, and death. Dialogue is frequently overwritten, giving the characters a kind of artificial edge that’s more distracting than revealing.

Visually, though, the film achieves something tangible. Lance Acord’s cinematography bathes everything in muted, grimy tones: it’s purposeful, and it works to establish the oppressive atmosphere of a neighborhood stuck in time, weighed down by addiction, gambling, and cheap booze. In those smoke-filled bars and cluttered alleys, there’s a real sense of place — a tight microcosm of disillusion.

Had the story been more focused and cohesive, the film’s uneven rhythm — which jumps between surreal conversations, scattered subplots, and bursts of violence — could’ve been a stylistic choice. But God’s Pocket often seems lost in its own loosely tied threads. The central investigation into the stepson’s death dissolves into a series of tangents that never gain dramatic urgency. Rather than building tension or emotional pull, the script undercuts its own stakes.

There are, however, moments that land. The scene of the death on the construction site — sudden, blunt, and stripped of music — is a shock of realism. Or when Mickey sits alone on the curb after a drunken night with Turturro’s character — that silence carries more weight than half the film’s spoken lines. It’s in these quiet moments that God’s Pocket hints at what it could have been.

Still, those moments are too few. The rest of the film lingers in a kind of tonal limbo — not tragic enough to move, not sharp enough to sting. The comedy often feels misplaced, and the drama, diluted. Its biggest flaw may be that it wants to say something honest about working-class America, about grief and grit, but never quite finds the cinematic language to do it.

What works: Hoffman’s nuanced and weary performance; Lance Acord’s oppressive, effective cinematography; the detailed sense of urban decay.
What doesn’t: Loose and clunky narrative structure; overworked and pretentious dialogue; tonal imbalance between drama and satire; underdeveloped supporting characters.
In the end, God’s Pocket wants to dissect the darkness of small-town life with a sardonic lens — and occasionally does. But most of the time, it drowns in its own heaviness. It's worth watching not just as a curiosity — the directorial debut of Slattery, one of Hoffman’s last films — but as a tough, uneven slice of American indie cinema that reveals more in its flaws than in its successes.



God’s Pocket (2014 / United States)
Direction: John Slattery
Screenplay: John Slattery, Alex Metcalf
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christina Hendricks, Richard Jenkins, John Turturro, Caleb Landry Jones, Eddie Marsan
Running Time: 88 min.