God's Pocket

very very watchable movie probably best described as a black comedy drama which happens to be Hoffmans last role in a movie.

boy! let me start off by saying that i'm a Chinese American that grew up in a middle class neighborhood just like this...an Italian neighborhood pre-dominantly. underneath this middle class surface there was so much dirt around that it wasn't funny. everybody knew somebody that was crooked, backstabbing, lying, cheating and doing shady things was the norm.

i remembered when i was a young teen...one day a African American boy walked his Italian girlfriend home to her neighborhood and the neighborhood boys threw him off the top of a building and killed him. these motherf**kers thought they were invincible and doing wrong was doing right.

this movie got it just right, the neighborhood and the grit and grime. the only good guy was the construction company owner...everybody else was a scumbag including and especially the young man who died at the construction yard at the start of the movie. that's the funny thing about life in my neighborhood...you know inside that your child is a scum*g, but he's still a saint in the parents eyes...LOL!

all i'm saying is that i grew up in a neighborhood like this and the movie hits home. these motherf**kers were a biased and racist bunch of bullies. i mean how hard is it for a mob to beat up one man? then they feel good about it.

anybody that lived in a neighborhood like this would get what the movie is about. a totally depressing movie brought to life by a great ensemble cast. it didn't hurt that there were some deliciously funny black and comedic moments in it.

all in all...i totally recommend this movie, i mean even if you don't like the subject matter, there were some great actors and actresses in it, close or at the top of their game.

"Until recently you only had to die once in this city, even if you came from God's Pocket." Mickey Scarpato (Hoffman) is the step-father to a kid that no one in the city really likes. The son gets killed at work one day but no one will tell the truth about what happened. This doesn't bother Mickey and he is ready to bury him right away but his wife and the boys mother demands the truth. Mickey does what he can to find out what happened but between finding out the truth, trying to make his wife happy and finding a way to pay for the funeral things begin to pile on top of him. When his wife turns to news reporter Richard Shellburn (Jenkins) for additional help things really begin to spiral out of control. This is a tough movie to review. I did think the movie was good and tense but did move very slow and was hard to stay focused on. The acting was great and this was very realistic but again though the pacing made it hard to stay engrossed in. Hoffman did a great job of playing someone who seemed lost and under an immense amount of stress and Jenkins was great as a sleazy reporter. The number one reason to watch this is for the acting. The movie itself, again, is pretty good but it is one you have to be in the mood for otherwise it will be a struggle to make it through. Overall, a movie that is worth seeing if you are in the mind set for it. It's too bad that Hoffman died because he is great in roles like this. I give it a B-.

"God's Pocket" is an offbeat independent film that's dark and it shows that for many people and in many places life is tough and complex never being what it seems or is meant to be. The now late great Philip Seymour Hoffman is Mickey a tough wise guy on the mean streets of Philadelphia who earns his living with loans and collecting debts. His wife Jeanie(Christina Hendricks)is wise in top size even though she has a wandering eye! To make matters more complex Mickey's stepson Leon is killed one day at work they say an apparent accident that went wrong!? Then to make matters worse this film shows it's dark humor as to bury Leon has became a problem! Overall this film is dark, different and offbeat proving that life is tough and hard and tragic and it shows that many streets and towns are like "God's Pocket" as many people find themselves trapped in a closed up pocket.

Philip Seymour Hoffman's stepson's dead body is used, not in the best possible taste, as a comic prop, and Eddy Marsan does a funny turn as the undertaker who won't extend Mickey any credit. Turturro's wife runs a flower-shop and proves to be handy with a hand-gun. The comedy is mixed with rough sex scenes and more than one savage beating. As in Nicolas Cage's JOE, GOD'S POCKET delivers visceral violence in a beautifully shot movie with fine performances from its ensemble cast.

Despite the moments of comedy and the pleasingly upbeat coda, the overwhelming mood is grimness and grunge. But this is how people live in today's city slums (1980s Phildelphia looks pretty much the same in 2014), scratching a living, fighting off creditors, killing each other.

It's a sad world we live in. A world where such a sad and beautiful story, full of acting genius and human feeling gets a 6.1 by an ever-action-craving audience... If you love the art of cinema, please watch this one.