MAGGIE MOORE(S) - Mark Reviews Movies

Maggie Moore(s), Screen Media Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 15, 2023

A twisty and offbeat mystery/thriller about the callous side of humanity, Maggie Moore(s) details a double-murder plot from two distinct perspectives. The first belongs to a weary police chief, trying to find some semblance of a life while being surrounded by death. The other focuses on the man orchestrating these crimes, as he accidentally falls into one murder and finds it surprisingly easy to arrange another, as well as additional ill deeds, in order to evade suspicion.

The second through line of this story, written by Paul Bernbaum and cheekily announcing at the top that "Some of this actually happened," plays as a dark comedy of errors. Our petty criminal escalates his ways with such coldness and unintentional success that we might start to believe luck is on his side, if not for how dumb that luck and, indeed, the guy himself actually are. As horrible as it may sound, there's a certain uncomfortable thrill in observing just how inadvertently effective the man's plan turns out to be for a long stretch of time.

Some criminals are intelligent enough to keep suspicion at bay. On the flip side, one has to imagine that others are desperate enough to behave in such befuddling ways that only a few believe they possess the wherewithal or even the mental capacity to pull off any crime.

Jay Moore (an equally pathetic and diabolical Micah Stock) most definitely belongs in that second category. He runs a franchise sandwich shop in some anonymous small town, and his most cunning scheme up until the point we first meet him is to buy expired food from a different supplier than the company who owns the franchise, use it at his restraint, and hope to have enough product without any mold on it—or customers who don't notice—to turn a profit. It's not an especially clever conspiracy, but that's about all we need to know about Jay—until, that is, we realize just how dangerous his particular combination of fear and stupidity actually can be.

Before being introduced to this amoral sad sack, we meet police chief Jordan Sanders (Jon Hamm), an upright cop of some time and a widower of about a year, who's called to the scene of a murder at a local motel. There's something awful about the way she was killed, but Jordan is more concerned about an odd detail. This victim is named Maggie Moore, and that's a strange coincidence, since a different Maggie Moore was killed only several days prior.

To describe the various turns of the plot—which initially flashes back to see how the sub shop owner's worry about being caught with moldy food gets him involved in hiding and supplying horrific materials to a convicted sex offender—would wreck much of the surprise here. There's plenty of it in Bernbaum's screenplay, but the reason director John Slattery's film finds its success, beyond just taking us through the mechanics of a haphazard and improvised conspiracy, rests in how well the material is grounded in simply observing this behavior.

We come to understand the demented logic on display here, as Jay seeks advice from Tommy (Derek Basco), the registered offender, and enlists the aid of a hearing-impaired brute named Kosco (Happy Anderson), who has done enough to know to have a paper shredder at the ready to dispose of the incriminating notes he writes. More players are introduced, most of them innocent victims only in that they're caught up in something of which they have no part, such as the second Maggie's allegedly philandering husband Andy (Christopher Denham) and her former co-worker Duane (Tate Ellington), who insists he's not a bigot despite all evidence to the contrary.

If there is a significant shortcoming here (other than the fact that film is overtly derivative of the humor and plotting of a few similarly styled crime thrillers, of course), it's that both Maggies, played by Louise Krause and Mary Holland, are left only as plot devices. Making up for the moral vacuum causing and surrounding their murders, though, is the main cop, played by Hamm with his trademark charm kept subtly at bay.

He's a man of principles, despite how cynical he might be about the state of the world and his own life. When Jordan chides his deputy (played by Nick Mohammed) for instances of gallows humor at a crime scene or at the office, one can sense Bernbaum attempting to keep his own screenplay, which does find warped humor in the eccentric ill-doers and the elaborately dimwitted multiple-murder plot, and the audience in check.

It's a simple but solid juxtaposition between the two story threads, and just so Jordan's sense of morality doesn't become too rigid, the deputy and the first Maggie's nosy, lonely neighbor Rita (Tina Fey) keep that in balance, too. The latter also gives the story a pleasant but slightly complicated romance, since Rita is a potential witness and has some personal baggage regarding an ex-husband, that gives Jordan some hope and challenges his moral philosophy to a certain degree.

In other words, the good guys of Maggie Moore(s) are suitably flawed and uncertain, while the villains are believably blundering but abominable. It's a simple dichotomy of humanity, but this film explores it with some consideration, even as it tells a story so outlandishly wicked that, if none of it were true, we very well might believe it could happen.

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