JohnnyLee1 Cast of truly unlikeable characters makes this difficult to really like but it has very strong actors in the roles and a grunge realism that is created perfectly by director Slattery. Portrays ambiguity of people. More comedic touches would have helped. A sweet-as-pie deadly sharp shooting florist, a truckload of meat that can't be given away, a body that doesn't stay still, etc., would have been comedy gold in any other movie. Running time: only 80 mins.

beebeedoo The movie description on Showtime reads "a small town man tries to hide the fact that he's responsible for the death of his stepson in a construction accident" . That's not at all the story!!!! I went ahead and watched because of the excellent actors, PSHoffman, Richard Jenkins, John Turturro, Eddie Marsan, and a few others. What a bunch of unexpected events! There was some drama, some comedy, and an all out strange ending. I enjoyed this movie and would recommend to others to check it out.

TxMike A found this on Netflix streaming movies. I was anxious to see one more PS Hoffman movie.First a note about the title. There is a 3 square block area of mostly Irish-Americans in South Philadelphia called "Devil's Pocket", said to have originated with a local priest saying the neighborhood kids were so bad they would steal a chain out of the devil's pocket.So for this fictional story they used the name "God's Pocket" but it is a loose reference to the same area. The story involves men who steal to make their businesses profitable. For example Philip Seymour Hoffman as Mickey Scarpato runs a meat market but in one scene he and his friends intercept a refrigerated truck to steal the sides of beef. They don't seem like crooks, it is as if that is just a way to do business.The running theme in this movie involved Mickey's stepson mouthing off at work in his construction job and being killed by an older man hitting him with a pipe on the back of the head. Everyone lies and says it was an accident, a piece of equipment swung and hit him. But the mother, Christina Hendricks as Jeanie Scarpato, just "feels" that a cover-up in involved.This gets the local newspaper man involved, and he gets involved in more than the story. Then Mickey has an issue with the local mortician who convinces Jeanie that he needs the $6000 casket, for which Mickey can't pay. So the body ends up in the back of Mickey's refrigerated truck until he can somehow raise the cash.What makes the movie worthwhile is the script and the acting. It is a madcap, quirky, somewhat dark comedy, where the con men have to run off to Florida in the end and hope the cops never find them.

thelasttwohundredyears Mickey (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an outsider and man of uncertain means, finds that his stepson, Leon, has died in a construction accident. As an outsider, Mickey tries to work with reality in Devil's Pocket, Pa. His wife (Christina Hendricks), however, knows the hood, and feels that her son's death was not an accident.Mickey loves Jeanie, so he's willing to get his underground buddies to help him calm Jeanie down; besides, he has money troubles of his own.Along the way, town tribune and echo of sentiment/voice of morality Richard Shelburn (Richard Jenkins) haphazardly, but ultimately self-interestedly, connects the dots.This is one brutal take on the true America—cash only, lacking health care or basic human dignity or unions or any sense of community beyond cheap whisky. Futureless Leon apes DeNiro like any al-Quaeda fighter. Florida and more guns are the only hope for 'Bird'; Jeanie glimpses only an unbuilt plot the rotting Shelburn is a skeleton upon. With a truly telling fact, the movie isn't even shot where it's about, Devil's Pocket, Pa. Actually, it was shot in New York—not even the desperate people it was about could get any jobs out of it.A curious factor about this movie, and pretty well any other ones, is that all American reviewers seem to want to judge it on its "comedy" quotient. In other words, if it doesn't make you laugh (laugh at the killing and the poverty and racism and hopelessness and lack of education, and so on), then it just ain't doggone no good of a fillum. From the Marx Brothers' "why I oughta" to _I Love Lucy_ to now, some Americans should query just what they're supposed to find so funny about hurting or killing often defenseless others (women, children, non-whites). There's a moment or two of dark humour in _God's Pocket_, but those aren't the moments that are supposed to define the movie. For American reviewers, however, they are, because Americans can't see their own destitution in any ways but laughter or money—normal human emotion/sentiments simply don't apply, or constitute currency.Here's a hint, or a tip, for those who really want to follow this film, but are too bored. The tortured drunk Shelburn isn't just put there for comic effect at the beginning, and the voice-overs later aren't there just for hapless loser commentary at the end. Americans know that they can't be un-American, even if it means losing to the rest of the world. In life and love, and in the town he owns, this is Shelburn's conundrum, and he attacks it with words, drink, a booty call, and probably being beaten to death.I don't know; I don't see how anyone, outside of America, could call this anything but a pretty good and ambitious, if hopeless, film.