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Unlike most troubled movie detectives, Jon Hamm’s Chief Jordan Sanders isn’t listless, or jaded, or even all that troubled. Aside from his wife passing away a year ago, Sanders is relatively content, if not clear-headed. He serves as the de facto audience surrogate in Maggie Moore(s), reuniting with Mad Men costar John Slattery, who steps behind the camera this time to direct.
via YouTubeOn the surface, Slattery’s black comedy crime picture may feel a bit derivative, but when you dig a bit deeper, there’s something really fresh transpiring on screen. The elevator pitch is simple: A small-town cop must crack the case of two murdered women in the same week, in the same town…and with the same name. Peculiar as it sounds, Maggie Moore(s) is actually quite levelheaded.
While the tone vacillates between darkly absurd and pleasantly tongue-in-cheek, Slattery keeps the dynamics of his film balanced like a triangle on a needle; three equal corners that must coexist to keep this thing afloat. Undergirding the high concept is the tale of three widowers, each with a differing motive and situation than the others.
One widower (Sanders) lost the love of his life and still feels spiritually connected to her. Widower #2, Jay Moore (Micah Stock), was separated from his wife and tries to win her back by sending a hitman to scare her. Only, the hitman disobeys Jay and murders the woman instead. As for widower #3, Andy Moore (Christopher Denham), he wanted his wife dead so he could run away with his mistress, but never stooped low enough to make it happen. Her death was at the hands of widower #2, who was trying to cover up his part in his own wife’s incidental murder.
The two murdered wives are the titular Maggie Moores (played by Louisa Krause and Mary Holland). As he tries to figure out what on earth is going on, Sanders falls for Rita (Tina Fey), the next-door neighbor of the first Maggie.
Confused? Don’t be.
Despite the intricate yarn, Maggie Moore(s) is never once confusing, and almost always intriguing. In a strange sense, Slattery manages to keep us engaged despite showing us behind the curtain – very similar to what Hitchcock used to love doing – so that the relationship between the audience and the mystery can evolve and even transcend those typical limitations.
What’s most captivating, however, is the way in which Slattery still manages to surprise us along the way. The audience almost always knows more than Hamm’s character, yet certain secrets are reserved so they’re revealed to both of us at the same time. Other movies try to do this, but the twists almost always feel contrived or shoehorned.
Writer Paul Bernbaum does his best Coen brothers impression as he imbues his genuinely smart script with relentlessly dark comedy amidst serious situations. Unlike, say, Fargo, Maggie Moore(s) is split into two seemingly disparate, yet tangential films. On the one hand, you have Hamm’s Sander in the middle of a legitimate murder mystery. And on the other, you have a farce about a bumbling idiot, Jay, who sells moldy food at his restaurant that he inexplicably gets for free from a pedophile in exchange for delivering to him lude photographs.
And yet, the two sides need each other to work. With two completely different tones, these two worlds almost never cross paths, even though they grossly affect one another. Sanders’ life becomes wrapped up in this case, which is only perplexing in the first place because the people responsible are buffoons. It’s the only reason why we have the mystery to begin with.
Regardless of its pervading levity, Maggie Moore(s) gets seriously dark a few times. Innocent people die at the hands of filthy individuals who then flippantly talk about their wretched misdeeds as though they’re simply squishing spiders in the garage. However, these filthy individuals aren’t minor characters as they would be in another film. In fact, they occupy half of the movie’s runtime.
Unlike American Psycho or Eating Raoul, which are very clearly satirical all the way through, Maggie Moore(s) is grounded in a sort of cinematic reality from the very start. There’s even a running gag where Hamm’s detective partner (Nick Mohammed) keeps making off-color jokes about victims’ deaths, while Hamm has to repeatedly remind him to stop.
For a story revolving around two connected murder mysteries, Maggie Moore(s) never becomes obsessive with its central case(s). It’s perfectly fine spending time with its characters in other regards. We see Sanders go to his grief support meetings, and later on several dates with Rita. We also watch as Jay deals with the corporate reps of his franchised subway shop.
We’re so trained to believe that movie detectives just think about their work 24/7 that it’s nice to see an example where that isn’t necessarily the case, believably so, and in a way that still very much serves the story. There are a lot of stretches that have almost nothing to do with these murders, and it almost feels un-movie-like, in a good way.
Much better here than he was in last year’s Fletch reboot, where he also plays a detective, Hamm drives the emotional stakes of the film and grounds it while being an unfunny, yet charismatic protagonist. He’s never down on his luck – just down – and he never seems to lose his confidence. The actor is able to find Sanders’ motivation and let it guide every beat he makes.
Tonal discordance aside, Maggie Moore(s) is an incredibly tight and accessibly peculiar crime movie, blending characters who are refreshingly real with ones who are comically dumb, for better or worse. We get a handful of these types of films a year, but few are as memorable and interesting as this.