‘Maggie Moore(s)’ Review: Jon Hamm and Tina Fey in a Messy Small-Town Crime Comedy – Hollywood Reporter

Jordan Sanders, the police chief on the heart of John Slattery’s new film, isn’t your typical big-screen cop. He’s performed by Slattery’s Mad Males compatriot Jon Hamm with a little bit of a scruff, a little bit of a paunch, and a contact of melancholy. But it surely’s his earnestness that actually units him aside. In a motel car parking zone the place a murdered lady has been discovered — the second on his watch inside every week — Jordan considers the potential methods she wound up there and regards the bullet wound behind her head. “My God,” he says, wanting overcome by the horror of all of it. “That’s terrible.”

As in God’s Pocket, his first function as a director, Slattery is right here in a sure intersection between the working class and the felony fringe, emphasis on the dumb lowlife faculty of larceny. And as soon as once more he’s steering a sport solid between dueling tones of darkness and humor, and never at all times hitting the mark. However with Maggie Moore(s) — which lands in theaters and shall be viewable on demand days after its Tribeca premiere — he strikes out of the gritty city shadows to an edge-of-the-world vibe steeped in desert weirdness, and on this uneven style gambit the general temper is lighter, the story’s small-scale however brutal killing spree however.

The screenplay by Paul Bernbaum (Hollywoodland) was apparently impressed by real-life occasions — “A few of this really occurred,” a title card declares on the outset, establishing a sure WTF angle towards all of the ha-ha killing that unfolds. On the opposite narrative observe, Hamm’s endearing sincerity as a widower attempting to work out his emotions in a writing class, and work out two murders via a winningly comedian give-and-take along with his crime-solving accomplice (a wonderful Nick Mohammed, of Ted Lasso), makes you would like the story’s nasty doings have been much less frantic.

By chance instigating the chain of murders is dummkopf supreme Jay Moore (a dedicated Micah Inventory), the financially strapped proprietor of a sandwich store, who hires a sadistic deaf thug named Kosco (Glad Anderson, singularly scary). Jay’s intent is to intimidate his spouse, Maggie (Louisa Krause), and persuade her to not go to the police, as she’s promised to do after discovering an envelope crammed with youngster pornography. However issues don’t proceed as deliberate, and Kosco takes issues to the subsequent degree, leaving a corpse as a substitute of a chastened Maggie. Studying that there’s a second Maggie Moore on the town, Jay hatches a plan designed to maneuver the investigative highlight off him and onto Andy (Christopher Denham), the opposite Maggie’s husband.

How Jay secured that envelope of porn with out figuring out its contents is ultra-ultra-ultra-unclear, however someway it’s his a part of a cope with Tommy T (Derek Basco), the dummkopf who sells him low-cost, rotten meals in order that he can hold his Fort Subs franchise working; Jay can’t afford the father or mother firm’s pricier provisions. By the point these two are arguing over the phrase “edible,” it’s onerous to care. And by the point the opposite Maggie Moore (Mary Holland) has died her terrible loss of life in a motel car parking zone, the homicide thriller, with all its many shifting elements, feels nearly irrelevant.

Jay’s nosy next-door neighbor, Rita (Tina Fey), is quickly divulging all to Jordan — not nearly Jay and Maggie’s large blowup, however about her romantic historical past. There’s one thing each candy and startling, each grown-up and needy, about the best way Rita casually lays her playing cards on the desk throughout her first encounter with Jordan. “He broke me down fairly good,” she says of her ex, including that “it takes braveness to be pleased.”

This additionally comes off as slightly primary self-help for grown-ups. (It needs to be famous that Rooster Soup for the Soul Leisure is without doubt one of the movie’s producers, which could additionally account for the gambling-addiction helpline information on the finish of the film.) Fey provides Rita’s honesty a sure weight, however the position might need had extra edge and been extra involving within the arms of a extra daring actor; Fey’s efficiency feels, distractingly, like a quieter spin on a well-recognized persona.

Slattery, himself an outstanding actor, has populated this busy story with characters bordering on caricature, the degrees of nuance various broadly. Along with Anderson’s murderous madman, a couple of supporting figures are vividly drawn, even when their fates really feel tangential at greatest: Nicholas Azarian as excessive schooler Greg, Jay’s harassed however observant worker; Bobbi Kitten as a pink-haired floozy who goes public with what she is aware of, and who is aware of get what she needs; and an particularly glorious Oona Roche because the comfort retailer cashier who, in all innocence, gives the spark for Jay’s murder-to-hide-a-murder plan (and who, pleased aspect be aware, is a niece of the members of the immortal singer-songwriter trio The Roches).

As a director, Slattery has an eye fixed for the sunbaked Southwestern setting, and DP Mott Hupfel makes evocative use of the New Mexico areas, each the formidable wild areas and the suburban flatness. (The film is ready in fictional Buckland County, apparently in Arizona.) Ben Sollee’s rating lends an unforced Western twang, whereas the design contributions of Jeff Schoen and Laura Bauer by no means overshadow the characters, reflecting who they’re whether or not the setting is a retro ranch home or a soulless McMansion.

However these characters’ story strands are pulled collectively in a means that feels extra mechanical than tantalizing. It’s Hamm’s emotionally wounded small-town high cop who provides the movie its engine, particularly in his dealings with Mohammed and Fey’s characters. The schemes and cover-ups and collateral injury spin spherical with little dimension, or, as Police Chief Sanders sums it up, “Only a bunch of those who deserve one another.”