Borrowing heavily in tone and story from the Coen Brothers, but with a little less polish, writer Paul Bernbaum borrowed from a real-life event (the opening title card says something to the effect of “Some of these things actually happened”) and created Maggie Moore(s). It's the odd crime drama with hints of clever observations about human behavior and a few outright laughs, all under the eye of director John Slattery. Slattery is perhaps best known for his role as agency head Roger Sterling in the series Mad Men, so it should come as no surprise that the star of his first film is his Mad Men co-star Jon Hamm, playing police chief Jordan Sanders, who finds himself investigating the deaths of two women who live just a few miles from each other, both with the same name.
Like many of the Coens’ crime films, Maggie Moore(s) has a lot of moving pieces, with the audience being the only ones who know everything that’s going on, from who the real murderers are to which leads the police are following that are completely wrong. Chief Sanders works with a partner, played by Ted Lasso’s Nick Mohammed, who is often wildly inappropriate and has a tendency to crack jokes at the worst possible times. When the film keeps its focus squarely on these two solving these crimes, it’s never better.
Sanders is a fairly recent widower who is also exploring his creative side by taking a writing class, and when we hear him reading his work in front of the class, certain nuances about his character’s state of mind are revealed in ways that aren’t technically narration (but they basically are). He also realizes he’s open to his first new relationship since his wife died when he meets Rita (Tina Fey), the divorced next-door neighbor of one of the victims. Once again, the filmmakers give us a pairing of two characters whose interactions are far more interesting than the main investigation, and I think that’s by design. Which is not to say that the investigation isn’t a doozy, with a deaf, overly enthusiastic, unpredictable contract killer (Happy Anderson), cheating husbands, expired food products, and the aforementioned nosy neighbor in Rita, who actually provides clues to the officers that help with the case.
Among the supporting players, I was particularly drawn into the plight of Micah Stock’s Jay Moore, the husband of the first Maggie Moore to die, who owns a sub shop that isn’t bringing in enough money to live on. He’s the architect of his own problems and downfall, but watching him flail in order to stay afloat is weirdly enjoyable.
Aside from the two-Maggies gimmick, there’s nothing especially new about Maggie Moore(s), so Slattery leaves it to his actors to make up the difference, which they do quite nicely. Everyone here is deeply flawed, with only Sanders and Rita even attempting to better themselves and their sense of self worth. He’s clearly taken with her, but she has a tendency to devalue herself as a defense mechanism, and he’s not a fan of that. At the same time, she’s not sitting home alone pining for her lost marriage, and for reasons that should have been explored, Sanders is not okay with the fact that Rita sometimes still sleeps with her ex-husband, the same man she claims did a number on her self-esteem. I wasn’t prepared, but I was pleased, that the film takes the time to dive into these characters’ psyches, certainly more so than most crime-centric films do. It’s an uneven work to be sure, but Slattery’s instincts are mostly dead-on when it comes to shifting our attention to his film’s most compelling elements, and I’m curious to see him fine-tune his craft as a director moving forward.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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