A Constant Visual Feast

I can’t make a “less is Moore” joke because that’s already baked into the title of my review. Talk about kneecapping oneself. What I didn’t crack wise about how Maggie Moore(s) is the kind of movie that kind of movie critics say doesn’t get made much anymore, true crime trappings aside; it’s a solid mid-budget thriller starring a bunch of talented and good-looking actors, with a firm bedrock of humor to support said crime, which happens to be brutal.

So naturally, with all that in mind, Maggie Moore(s) came and went in everybody’s pop cultural consciousness, and if that isn’t a damn shame then I don’t know what is. Jon Hamm continues shining in these stripped down and open roles that rely on him being a full-blooded human, in contrast to the way Mad Men required he play constricted and deflective for the bulk of its duration. (This is a feature, not a bug.) I like that Hamm is heading in this direction with his career. Parlaying his Mad Men image and success and incalculable handsomeness into a big movie star career would’ve been – should’ve been – easy. But he’s doing productions like this and Confess, Fletch instead. I respect that. He gets to flex muscles here he might not in glossier studio work.

You can read my full review over at Paste Magazine.