FILM REVIEW: KILLER JOE

KILLER JOE (18)

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Juno Temple, Gina Gershon, Emile Hirsch, Thomas Haden Church

Director: Wiiliam Friedkin

Running time: 102 minutes

Released 29th July

Released by: Worldview Entertainment


Chris (Emile Hirsch) is an inadequate at life, destined to be forever in debt to one person or another and blaming anyone but himself for what he considers bad fortune. Kicked out by the wife that he's beaten once too often, he finds himself back at the cheap, messy, beer-can spilled Texas trailer home slovenly occupied by his father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) and stepmother Sharla (Gina Gershon). Chris needs to find $6,000 quickly or the best he can hope for is every bone in his body being broken slowly by a local loan-shark. Ansel doesn't have too dimes to rub together, so Chris suggests a plan.


Chris has overheard from his mother's new husband, Rex, that she's just taken out a life-insurance policy of $100,000 -with her teenage daughter Dottie (Juno Temple)  named as the sole beneficiary. Chris has always been unhealthily protective of his sister, recognising her fragility and otherness, perhaps caused by her mother trying to kill her as an infant. But now he sees an opportunity. If he can have their mother killed ('who would miss her?', he argues) then he can pay off his debts and give the rest of the family more security.

To this end he finds a police detective, Joe Cooper (McConaughey) who has a nice sideline in contract killing but zero tolerance for idiots or double-crosses. Joe says he'll do the job, but when Chris and Ansel explain they won't have the money until after the deed is done and the insurance paid out, he's about to walk... until he spies Dottie. Perhaps, he'll take the job after all. But with a leer in his eye, he'll want a 'down payment'...


"There's a casual air to the sex and violence that follows...punctuating the film like a prisoner's emotionless, guilt-free shank... but it's an explicit, film-noir study of grotesques rather than pure titillating torture-porn... " 

William Friedkin, a legendary director famous for the likes of The Exorcist, The French Connection and Rules of Engagement, but with less notable entries in recent years, is clearly wanting to re-establish his credentials with controversy and it should be said immediately that, from its opening moments, Killer Joe pulls none of its explicit punches. A Gina Gershon entrance has never been more in your face than here and there's a casual air to the sex and violence that follows it, punctuating the film like a prisoner's emotionless, guilt-free shank. With films that quite deliberately aim to shock, the results are always going to divide. I've found films like The Devil's Rejects to be wholly unpleasant, reveling in a sordid nastiness that makes one wonders why anyone would want to create it to begin with, never mind watch it. Killer Joe has more merits than that - it's an explicit, film noir study of grotesques rather than pure titillating torture-porn, but it is still a raw-nerve, scab-picking experience that often leaves you shifting uncomfortably, whatever the other technical merits it can offer.

A colder analysis confirms that this is, without doubt, McConaughey's picture. He's always been a good actor, first cited as a young Paul Newman-a-like, though too often side-lined into mediocre rom-coms that service his innate real-life Texas charm but little else. Here he gets to flex a muscle that shifts between taught stillness and spasms of brutality. Joe is the kind of character that owns a room merely by entering it, a man for whom the most mangy and aggressive neighbourhood mutt falls suddenly silent. It's a tribute to McConaughey that in some of the movie's key scenes he draws the eye and makes you want to look away simultaneously. You'll hate Joe and then hate yourself for watching. You aren't an audience, you're a voyeur to a sociopath with a badge, but still arguably the sanest man in the room.


Juno Temple is also impressive in a very difficult role, one that exposes her character and performance  to both physical and mental challenges. Though not a newcomer, this is the kind of brave role and bravura casting which should catapult the young British actress - barely in her 20s - ahead of those taking the much safer, if higher-profile route to Hollywood. She imbues Dottie with both strength and frailty and walks the line with her character as impressively and subtly as McConaughey does in other ways with his title role.


It's not big or clever to spoil a movie's ending, but it seems only fair to say that anyone expecting things to be tied up with a nice bow at the end may have to live with disappointment. Perhaps reflecting its origins as an equally controversial stage play by Tracy Letts, the ending feels more random and unfinished than most movies and may frustrate the audience more than anything that has come in the previous ninety minutes.

As a showcase for performances this is certainly impressive, but in all other ways, Killer Joe is a difficult film to recommend, populated by damaged or damaging people who are authors of their own misfortune - and for whom it is hard to generate any real or lasting sympathy for the loss to the gene-pool. I respect the workings and the movable parts within its cinematic frame but I can't say I actually liked the bigger, dirtier, whole and, frankly,  I may never look at KFC the same way again.

3/5