And Yet Another Film Review: “God’s Pocket”
Somewhere toward the merciful ending of Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch,” the narrator muses that sometimes good comes from bad.
I just watched “God’s Pocket” and I am now motivated to read Pete Dexter, the author of the novel on which this film is based. I can only hope for the best.
I should have known better than to watch a film that was released on pay-per-view the same day it was released in the theaters, even if that film stars Phillip Seymour Hoffman, John Turturro, Richard Jenkins, Christina Hendricks and Eddie Marsan. Sometimes, as I said, you just have to hope for the best.
I know this is a work of fiction and not a documentary; I know that film is a visual art and it is parochial to go on and on about the plot; I know that Coleridge said we should suspend disbelief. I know, I know.
But this film has Hoffman playing a low-level (or perhaps no level) gangster named Scarpato.
Let me repeat that: Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a character named Scarpato.
And he is married to a woman played by a somnambulist Christina Hendricks.
Let me repeat that too: he is married to a woman who looks like Christina Hendricks. Whom he ignores.
Hoffman’s character is involved in hijacking a meat truck. Is he a butcher? Does he own a butcher shop? Does he know anyone who can take the meat off his hands? I don’t know. He does own a refrigerated meat truck.
His borderline psychopath stepson gets (justly) killed at a construction site while opening his mouth to the wrong person.
A kid this crazy gets a job at a construction site in a town where looking at someone the wrong way can get you killed? I don’t know.
His mother (Hendricks) thinks the story about her son’s death is fishy. Why? I don’t know.
She asks her meat-truck-hijacking husband to look into it. He asks his partner in crime (Turturro) to look into it. (Why, I don’t know.)
Turturro asks a violent thug to whom he owes $20,000 to look into it, because, you know, when you owe a violent thug money you can’t pay, you ask the guy to do a favor–not for you, but for your friend’s wife. The thug agrees….why, I don’t know.
The manager of the construction site where the kid was murdered–where several people gave false testimony to cops as to how the kid got killed– would, you think, do as little as possible to attract more police attention.
Instead, he Jew-baits the thugs sent to talk to him (These thugs are Jewish? Who knew?), and then proceeds to gouge out the eye of one of the thugs and beat the hell out of the other, because, as we all know, this is what you do in a close-knit neighborhood where everyone knows everyone and we all know you can maim gangsters with impunity.
The gangsters decide not to kill this guy but instead move to take out Turturro’s character (why…I don’t know), whose Aunt (I had no idea who she was until I read a review of the film) does not merely shoot, but summarily executes the two thugs sent to harm her nephew. I guess if you can gouge out a gangster’s eye with no repercussions, you might just as well have an old lady execute the boss and his henchman, too.
Oh, I am not done.
Hoffman’s character can’t afford the funeral for his stepson, so he gets into an argument with the funeral home director. The director gets tough so Hoffman slaps him around a little. When Hoffman leaves he finds his stepson’s body in the alley–thrown out like so much trash. You’d think Hoffman’s character, who just belted the funeral director for acting up, would go back and have a few words with the guy. No, he puts the corpse into the meat truck.
And Hendricks decides to fall for the advances of a seriously alcoholic newspaper columnist (Jenkins). She is distraught over the death of her only son. So, of course she picks up with Jenkins, who does nothing but mouth platitudes to her while he drinks whisky and describes himself as old, because, clearly, he is a step up from a guy who steals meat for no reason and owns a meat truck.
There’s more, but why bother.
Never has so much talent gone to such ill use.
But I will read Dexter: thanks, guys.
