Killer Joe

The end was very unrealistic in my perspective. Also, it's an open ending. I don't really like that. But perhaps this is very art house.

You will have to look hard and long for a film that's as quirky as Killer Joe. William Friedkin must have been inspired by the equally quirky Fargo in doing this film.

Both films are about people who get into criminal enterprises that really don't have the talent. Bill Macy decides that good way out of his financial difficulty is to arrange to have his wife kidnapped and his rich father-in-law extorted for the ransom in Fargo. In Killer Joe, young Emile Hirsch goes into the drug dealing business and owes some big bucks to some nasty people. So a quick way to some ready cash is to kill his mother and get her insurance policy via the backdoor as his sister Juno Temple is the beneficiary.

Major difference between Fargo and Killer Joe is that Macy and his family are good middle class Minnesotans. Hirsch, Temple, their father Thomas Haden Church and his second wife Gina Gershon are Texas lowlife trailer park trash. The first wife, the mother of Hirsch and Temple is Julia Adams and truth be told no one is really going to mourn the passing of this one in any event.

Hirsch even has a hit man picked out. It's Matthew McConaughey who is a Dallas police detective and doubles as a hit man on the side. He's both mysterious and dangerous and gradually inserts himself into their family group, especially since he demands as a retainer the nubile body of Juno Temple in lieu of the cash they don't have until a settlement comes forth.

Just like Fargo everything and anything that can go wrong does with this foolproof scheme thought of by a fool. If I had to single anyone out in the cast it's Emile Hirsch who is a degenerate and a lowlife, but still you feel a bit of sympathy for him because he's so pathetically dumb. And McConaughey in the title role will also make you take notice.

Killer Joe while not as good as Fargo is still good enough to savor. I agree with another reviewer who says you will either like it or hate it, but won't be indifferent.

I don't know why I didn't enjoy this more than I did. It seems to have all the right ingredients for a down and dirty post noir with fine performances all round and Friedkin's steady directorial hand. Actually for the most part I was engaged, even if the central premise regarding the life insurance is a little corny and the family just a little too cliché trailer trash. It is tough and it is amusing but as things proceed and begin to get a little silly it is the central performance of Matthew McConaughey, cooling pulling on and off his black leather gloves and giving his stare, that holds this together and hold you in its grip. Towards the end, things change and I can only assume this is the 'fault' of the original stage play, where the high drama might have worked better, within the film it jars and spoils the torrid but believable situation that has developed. There is little development of the characters, which is fine, but when we are asked to suddenly see things so differently, as here at the end, that lack of feeling for the characters matters a lot. So the inconclusive end is a bit of a mess, not to mention the chicken scene and in my view tends to spoil what had been a sensationally good start.

William Friedkin's career has been up and down most of his career, I guess it's because he refuses to sell-out and go commercial. His most 'Hollywood' film to date has been The Hunted, from 2003, but even that was unusually muted for a film of that type.

His latest effort is yet another adaptation of a Tracy Lett's play (that's a male Tracy), after Bug in 2006, and is choc full of warped, in-your-face sexuality, bloody violence, and humor so dark only the most depraved viewers will find funny. In fact, it's more like a David Cronenberg film than Friedkin.

If you've seen movies like The Acid House, or the 1998 Todd Solondz face-punch Happiness and find them amusing through the gaps in your fingers then you'll be sick enough to fully enjoy Killer Joe.

Matthew McConaughey plays Joe Cooper, an unorthodox Dallas police detective who is 'hired' by petty drug dealer Emile Hirsch to whack his old lady and thus benefit from an insurance policy with his deadbeat dad (Thomas Haden Church in a wonderful performance) and virginal, oddball sister Dottie (Juno Temple). Only they cannot raise the money to pay Joe so he agrees to spend some quality time with Dottie until the policy pays off in waiver of his upfront fee.

It reminded me a lot of an Oliver Stone film called U-Turn, another Texas-based psycho-sexual murder plot filled with heat-waves and perpetual distrust, but was much more enjoyable. The perverse sexuality and dark humor really appeal to a mind like mine, and McConaughey's performance atones for his crimes in various awful romcoms. Joe is a supremely weird but mesmerising character. You never really know what he's going to do next but you can still see the cogs turning as he evaluates every new plot twist. Plus it has full-frontal nudity from Gina Gershon and Juno Temple, which I absolutely do not disagree with.

The film has been slapped with the dreaded NC-17 in the US, which massively limits the amount of theatres that will be showing it. But, indirectly, it will only turn it into a cult film, and thus a bigger success with its intended audience than it otherwise might have been.

I highly recommend that you a part of that audience, it's as far from Hollywood as Friedkin has gotten since Cruising in 1980. Even at the age of 76, he's still on top form.

Edit: I just remembered that U-Turn is actually set in Arizona.

Just off watching this last night at TIFF 2011, I am still reeling from what I actually witnessed on the screen.

First of all, where has Gina Gershon been?? Her character was so believable in this, I almost forgot she was in Showgirls :)

I could say the same thing about nearly every other character as well. They all have such subtle personalities, it seems as though they are playing themselves.

As for the plot, it is somewhat standard fare, as the trailer could easily giveaway, however it's how it progresses and pans out, is the most interesting aspect of the film.

There are a few scenes which some will find very hard to watch (in fact, during one now-notorious scene, dozens of people left the screening I was at), but if you stick with them, you will be in for a... treat? I'm not so sure, but you will have never seen anything like it, nor will you.

For the cast's performances alone, I highly recommend this film, but if you are feint of heart, or become queasy at the site of blood, maybe skip it.