Review of John Slattery’s black comedy “Maggie Moore(s)”

Maggie Moore(s) director John Slattery cast his longtime Mad Men colleague Jon Hamm, famous comedian Tina Fey, and Nick Mohammed, whom viewers met through Ted Lasso, to play the lead roles. A modest but successful hybrid of a black crime comedy and an unexpectedly gentle romcom appreciated Yulia Shagelman.

By far the most recognizable character Jon Hamm associates with even now, eight years after the series ended, is Mad Men’s Don Draper. The combination of an imposing front page in a 1950s magazine and a rather ugly personality made him decidedly irresistible. But while Hamm continues to rely on his square jaw and steely gaze in some of his work (as in last year’s Top Gun: Maverick), already during Mad Men’s time he tried to experiment with roles, often choosing as far as possible from the character or even parody ones – for example, in the comedy series “Studio 30”, where he first made an on-screen couple with Tina Fey.

This desire to break out of the frame of type should be clear to anyone John Slattery, who played another example of a toxic man from the middle of the last century in Mad Men. However, he went further and moved to the other side of the camera, first directing several episodes of Mad Men, and in 2014 filming his feature directorial debut, God’s Pocket. In “Maggie Moore(s),” he lets his former co-stars perform in less-than-traditional roles and relies heavily on their ability to connect emotionally with audiences.

Hamm plays Jordan Sanders, the battered police chief of a small town somewhere in the southwestern United States. Having buried his wife a year ago, he still has not recovered from this loss, describing his loneliness and melancholy in stories for a writing circle. Despite personal grief and work that regularly reveals the less attractive sides of human nature, Jordan has not lost empathy and feels genuine sympathy for the victims of crimes.

One of the victims is Maggie Lee Moore (Mary Holland) – at the beginning of the film, we see how she tries to escape from the big man with a gun chasing her, but she does not succeed. Upon learning the name of the murdered woman, Jordan and his second-in-command, Reddy (Nick Mohammed), look at each other in surprise. Why – it becomes clear when the authors of the film postpone the action a week ago, unfolding the chain of events that led to the violent death of another Maggie Moore (Louis Krause) – the namesake of the first, or rather, the second victim.

“Maggie Moore(s)” is one of those non-detective detectives where the answer to the question “Who did this?” is known immediately, and the intrigue is set primarily by a different question: “How will he be caught?” And also, given Slattery’s and screenwriter Paul Bernbaum’s unconventional sense of humor, questions about how many people get hurt in the process and which of them can make it to its finale unscathed. The atmosphere, plot and characters are reminiscent of the films of the Coen brothers in the “super light” version (which, however, does not concern violence: it is perhaps even too realistic here for a picture that wants to be black, but still a comedy).

It all starts with a little man who made a big mistake. Jay Moore (Micah Stock) owns a fast food restaurant and, in order to get out of debt, buys expired food from a certain Tommy T. (Derek Basco), and also keeps his envelopes with child pornography. When his wife Maggie discovers them, she threatens to go to the police, and Jay decides to scare her by hiring a gloomy deaf guy (Happy Anderson) to do it. He, however, not only scares Maggie, but kills her. In order to confuse the tracks and divert suspicion from himself, Jay comes up with a “brilliant” plan: entrust Cosco with the murder of another Maggie Moore, whose existence he learned by accident, and present everything as the work of a mysterious maniac.

While investigating the case, Jordan meets Rita (Tina Fey), a neighbor of the first Moores, a divorcee with her own personal drama behind her. She becomes an important witness, as well as the first woman who managed to arouse his romantic interest after the death of his wife. Watching these two weary middle-aged men carefully approach each other is no less, if not more interesting, than a criminal intrigue. And although the triumph of justice in the final is not entirely complete, the fact that the characters finally find the courage to be happy still leaves a feeling of a happy ending.