Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christina Hendricks (Lance Acord/IFC Films)

Written by Slattery and Alex Metcalf, based on the novel by Pete Dexter
Produced by Sam Bisbee, Jackie Kelman Bisbee, Lance Acord, Slattery, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Emily Ziff
Released by IFC Films
USA. 88 min. Rated R
With Philip Seymour Hoffman, Richard Jenkins, Christina Hendricks, John Turturro, Caleb Landry Jones, Domenick Lombardozzi, Joyce Van Patten, and Glenn Fleshler

If you care about contemporary film, you are probably going to see this movie, since it’s one of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s last. Unfortunately, you will not get a major addition to the Hoffman canon. This just is not that kind of film, although there is one patented Hoffman-furiously-screaming-obscenities moment, approaching that great “Shut! Shut! Shut! Shut up!” outburst in Punch Drunk Love. What you will get is a sporadically involving piece of story-focused filmmaking with a keen sense of place, a couple of memorably grisly moments required by the urban crime genre, and not much else.

The film is set in some unspecified period in the seventies in a desperate section of Philadelphia known as God’s Pocket, a place where people wear their lack of education and their penchant for violence and gambling like badges of honor. A local gambler and small time thief, Mickey Scarpato (Hoffman), lives with his disproportionately attractive wife, Jeanie (Christina Hendricks), and her despicable son, Leon (Caleb Landry Jones). Leon is a laughably psychotic racist given to insane, meaningless rants while waving around a razor, who thankfully dies early on after an older African American coworker at his construction job breaks his skull with a pipe in front of the whole work site.

Leon so deserved this death that when the boss, Coleman Peets (True Detective’s Glenn “The Yellow King” Fleshler), tells his crew to lie to the police and say that something just fell on the kid’s head, everyone agrees. And yes, True Detective fans, Fleshler unleashes some vintage, Yellow King-esque mayhem in one scene, providing giddy flashbacks to this winter when he terrified an entire nation.

Leon’s death barely grazes Mickey, but Jeanie is a wreck, and is convinced for some unknown reason that something fishy was afoot with her son’s death. Yes, woman’s intuition is the central driving plot device, which is a problem with a film that is as straightforwardly narrative as this. Jeanie’s conviction that there’s more to her terrible son’s death than meets the eye results in a variety of complications, many of them violent, as enforcers are marshaled to muscle answers from Peets.

The greater part of the story, however, concerns Mickey’s frantic, desperate attempts to raise enough money to buy a top-flight casket for his stepson from sleazy funeral home owner Jack Moran (Eddie Marsan). Marsan, featured in Showtime’s Ray Donovan, is perfectly cast in this film, as it suffers from the same thing that TV show does. It is a belief in its own hype as an immediate classic for having the look, feel, and acting pedigree of a classic piece, without the intangibles and magic that go into making one. It also uses the strategy of filling almost every role, no matter how small, with a recognizable That Guy actor, making it all feel more consequential than it is.

Probably the highlight is local writer Richard Shelburn (Richard Jenkins), a man who is respected in even the most fetid corners of God’s Pocket, but who has given up years ago. Now he spends his time drinking all day and using the last fumes of his fame to bed girls a third his age. Jeanie’s insistence that Leon’s death was foul play eventually causes Shelburn’s boss to put him on the trail, but he puts in little effort, focusing instead on trying to seduce the grieving Jeanie while her husband is busy scaring up money to buy a fancy casket. Jenkins rarely gets a chance to be a total degenerate, and he has a lot of fun with the role. He should play scumbags more often.

In his first directorial effort, John Slattery does a competent job of telling the story, but there is not much in the way of distinctive style. He relies heavily on the narrative and the veteran cast to get everything across, and the film feels slight for it. It has the kind of town-focused crime story and stellar cast that Ben Affleck could have made something special with, but Slattery will surely become more confident in developing a style and tone of his own. Still, it is watchable with a nice sense of place, featuring several satisfyingly intense moments. Just don’t expect Hoffman to do much more than walk around performing money-raising tasks while looking browbeaten.