Film Review: Maggie Moore(s) is low-key cinema about the personal, rather than any grand schemes

"It’s all very reminiscent of Fargo: the hapless criminal, the ostensibly comic but lethal killer, the investigating detective with a folksy approach to life, all set against a backdrop of Nowheresville, America."

Maggie Moores. Pic: Screen Media

• Maggie Moore(s)
• ★★★★☆
• Sky Cinema

Police chief Jordan Sanders (Jon Hamm) is baffled when he discovers that two women named Maggie Moore (Mary Holland and Louisa Krause) have been murdered in his small mid-western town in the space of a week. 

It’s hardly a coincidence; then again, it’s hardly the work of an especially bizarre serial killer either. What’s going on? 

So begins Maggie Moore(s) (16s), in which Sanders, a widower and aspiring writer, teams up with Rita Grace (Tina Fey), a neighbour of one of the Maggies, to puzzle out the mystery.

Blackly comic in tone, the story takes us back to a week before the first Maggie is murdered, where we discover that her abusive husband Jay (Micha Stock) has hired Kosco (Happy Anderson) to threaten his wife, who is planning to go to the cops with evidence that will incriminate Jay in a scam. 

It’s all very reminiscent of Fargo: the hapless criminal Jay, the ostensibly comic but lethal killer Kosco, the investigating detective with a folksy approach to life, all set against a backdrop of Nowheresville, America.

That said, Paul Bernbaum and John Slattery, writer and director, respectively, aren’t quite as sharp as the Coen Brothers when it comes to oddball characters and offbeat scenarios.

Having established their story on what appears to be an outrageous coincidence, Bernbaum and Slattery ease off on the improbabilities, allowing the movie to unfold in a low-key fashion in which personal flaws, rather than any kind of grand schemes, are key.

Jon Hamm is strong here as the bereaved police chief, and while Tina Fey’s character doesn’t afford her many opportunities to play to her comic strengths, there’s plenty of humour to be mined from Micha Stock’s Jay as he staggers from one crisis to another, and Nick Mohammed’s cheerfully insubordinate Deputy Reddy.