Review: 'Don Verdean' Starring Sam Rockwell, Amy Ryan, Danny McBride, Will Forte, Jemaine Clement, And More

Sam Rockwell cuts a great figure as a con man. Based on performances in “Matchstick Men,” “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” and even “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” Rockwell appears able to slip into a particular zone of earnest dishonesty without any real effort at all. (Not drawing any conclusions about the man here; that’s talent.) Even when he’s working in a minor mode, as in “Don Verdean,” that talent is enough to command some attention.

Rockwell plays this film’s title character, a “Biblical archeologist” whose work is more than a bit suspect. He’s made a living by unearthing Biblical artifacts, to the delight of the faithful. But is he for real? Around this figure, writer/director Jared Hess (“Napoleon Dynamite”) builds a comic diversion pitched somewhere between soft satire and madcap adventure.

Don is on the decline, but he’s recruited by Tony Lazarus (Danny McBride), a would-be megachurch preacher. Supposedly, Lazarus wants Don’s skill with antiquities to...