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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 12/26/2012 : 20:15:14
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I can see why critics are divided on veteran director William Friedkin's latest.
Working from Tracy Letts' screen adaptation of his stageplay, he and Friedkin travel a path forged by such masters of the low rent, shit-kicking genre as Tennessee Williams, David Lynch, Harold Pinter, Lanford Wilson, and catching them up Sam Peckinpah and Quentin Tarantino.
Letts is quite a way behind, but he's treading similar ground - dysfunctional family doesn't even begin to cover it.
By sheer longevity alone, Friedkin's acquired the directorial skills to craft a visual narrative that not only carries a script decorated with wit but knows when to shut up. In atmospheric terms, even his great outdoors feels claustrophobic.
He's also coaxed one of the best performances of Matthew McConaughey's career. I won't say his eponymous Killer Joe shows he's ready to tackle Hamlet. But he does surprise, even if his corrupt cop's behavior reminds us of Dennis Hopper.
Yup, we're in trailer trash country chez Smith. As Papa Ansel, the excellently understated Thomas Haden Church is befuddled by life; he can't reconcile his urges and disappointments with the simple expectations of the good life that must have fuelled his adolescence.
His divorced wife, apparently the matriarch from hell [though we're only told not shown], has shacked up with an unseen dude called Rex who's reportedly [so we're told, not shown] helped arrange her last affairs. Turns out she's amassed something more plush than a nest-egg.
Ansel shares his humble Texas abode with his two kids Chris and Dottie [Emile Hirsch and Juno Temple both terrific]. She's a nubile nymphet who hasn't yet scratched those incessant itches between her legs; at one point she claims she's twelve. Who knows, she could be.
Older brother Chris finds himself in the kind of big trouble that's born to be a plot point. He owes some drug dudes big-time and can't see a way out.
No bright ideas from Dottie [with whom hanky-panky is softly hinted]; and none from dad nor his wife Sharla [played with total commitment by Gina Gershon as a cross between a mythic harpy and a porn star].
Then Chris discovers that if his mean mom dies, Dottie will inherit all the loot. And so a scheme is hatched by these characters who, let's face, would never win an Einstein think-alike competition.
They're going to hire the legendary Killer Joe to ice mom and collect the insurance. Even with KJ's hefty fee, it'll be enough to clear Chris and set up the rest of them on a smoother path.
How they manage all that, what may or may not go right or wrong, how much fighting of the most bloody variety is involved, and what kind of sexual distractions complicate a simple down-home every-day murder - all are the province of the film.
I wouldn't exactly call it a date night.
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Killer Joe
