Maggie Moore(s) (Jon Hamm, 2023)
Maggie Moore(s) is an indie crime drama, loosely based on the unsolved case of two women called Mary Morris, who were both killed in Harris County, Texas in the same week in 2000.
The movie is written by Paul Bernbaum and directed by John Slattery, who cast his former Mad Men-colleague Jon Hamm as the police chief of a dusty desert town trying to crack the case.
The movie gained some notoriety when family members of the two murdered women complained that the cause of their grief was turned into in a movie.
After Slattery talked to the families, they changed their minds, in the hope that the release of the movie - which opens in the States this weekend - will trigger the memories of possible witnesses (and so help solve the case by calling Crimestoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS).
In interviews Slattery and Bernbaum claim that they only used the basic info of the murders in their movie (which takes place in Arizona). But if you do some research (or Google Unsolved Mysteries Wiki like I did) you will soon find that the stories bear more than a passing resemblance to each other. Which certainly makes for interesting viewing.
In the Mary Morris case the central question was: was the murder of the first Mary a mistake and the second the real target? Or was it the other way around and was the second killing an attempt to make the first one look like it was a mistake?
In the movie Slattery and Bernbaum immediately choose one of the two options, which somewhat lessens the impact of their story. The movie also ventures into black comedy territory, but it sometimes seems like it’s holding back, as if the creative duo didn’t want to offend or seem exploitative after all.
Still, I liked it. Maggie Moore(s) wants to be an offbeat movie in the spirit of the Coen Brothers and, even though I’m not blind to its faults, for me that approach kinda works.
The death of the two Maggie’s opens two different cans of worms, which leads to some interesting developments, and there is enough violence in the movie to make sure it’s not only the women who get offed.
And even though we know more than Hamm, it’s still fun to watch him do his search. He has great chemistry with his former 30Rock co-star Tina Fey, who plays his possible love interest, while also being the neighbor of the main suspect.
Hamm’s comedic banter with Nick Mohammed (Ted Lasso) as his police partner, also works quite well. Micah Stock and Happy Anderson do their finest as two very shady characters. And there is some great character work done in some of the smaller roles.
It’s an uneven but fascinating movie, both in its own right and as an addendum to the tragic true story it is based on.