‘The Good Mother’ review: The real mystery? Hilary Swank’s bad luck with screenplays

We’ve seen this regularly at the start of crime dramas: The establishing shot of a downtown cityscape, from the vantage point of a drone camera, taking it all in.

In “The Good Mother,” that “all” is Albany, New York, and the foreground welter of freeways is backed by one of the more unassuming skylines in screen history. “Albany noir” is the phrase the director and co-writer of “The Good Mother,” Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, applies to his 2016-set mystery, starring Hilary Swank as Marissa, a Times Union reporter living under a cloud of loss, alcohol and grief.

Marissa’s husband: dead five years now. Her younger grown son, Michael, is killed in the opening minutes in an apparent drug-related revenge hit. A user as well as a dealer, Michael had been trafficking in fentanyl-laced heroin, flooding the streets of America. At the funeral, Marissa spies Michael’s girlfriend, Paige (Olivia Cooke), a recovering user herself. Striding over to her as the coffin’s lowered, Marissa smacks her at the precise instant Paige blurts out that she’s pregnant.

These are extremely busy opening minutes. Then the rhythm relaxes, to the point of going horizontal. The story in “The Good Mother” leads to a wary alliance between Marissa and Paige as they set out to find Michael’s killer, known only by a menacing tattoo on his hand. They’re assisted by Marissa’s older son (Jack Reynor), an Albany police officer, likewise about to become a parent. He suspects the culprit is Michael’s drug dealer pal Ducky. But are things what they seem? Well, there’s a reason they’re called “plot twists,” not “plots lacking any sort of deviation from the expected.”

The script, co-written by Madison Harrison, is a strange, tentative beast: It overpacks in the early going, and then dog-paddles around, pausing for nonverbal character business — Marissa drinking, thinking, driving, ruminating, watching. It’s as if “The Good Mother” took the wrong lessons from “Sharp Objects,” the HBO eight-parter featuring Amy Adams, driving around aimlessly, or (better) the HBO “Mare of Easttown.”

This brings us to Swank, who hasn’t had the luck she deserves. Two Oscars; lots of strong work; a rich, full life, I’m assuming. But where is the next great role for her? She has to be frustrated at this point not to have found her “Sharp Objects” or “Easttown”; she’s been throwing the dice on short-lived traditional series (”Alaska Daily,” like “The Good Mother” and “Sharp Objects,” was a narrative about a newspaper reporter) and indistinct features. As Marissa, she keeps the lid sealed tight and the muttered resentments coming, in a largely recessive and reactive role. But the script points the finger of guilt at a major character too clearly, too early. And this is one storyline that might’ve worked better as a limited series, just to air it out a little.

Note to future writers of America: Beware naming a character “Ducky,” and then having other characters call that name out (”Ducky? Ducky! Ducky, where are you? Ducky!”) often enough to force memories of the “Sesame Street” song “Put Down the Duckie” to the forefront of your brain, thereby eroding what little investment you may have in this indifferent Albany noir. The strongest minutes in “The Good Mother” belongs to Karen Aldridge. She takes care of business so well in her monologue about her character’s grief and loss, her exit from the narrative becomes just one more oh-well factor in an indifferent Albany noir.

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'THE GOOD MOTHER'

2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for language throughout, some violent content and drug material)

Running time: 1:30

How to watch: In theaters Friday

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