Killer Joe has to be one of the most unsettling cinema experiences I’ve had in a long time, Tine and I sat until the end credits had finished rolling in a surreal stupor and when we finally left the cinema we were both speechless (which is a rarity). I really had very little to say about this movie. It’s taken me a week to scrape together some thoughts...
This film is extremely violent, deeply disturbing, relentless and at times very funny. Things are pretty messed up from the start – the premise is that kids Chris and Dottie (Emile Hirsch and Juno Temple), along with their father and step mum, agree to have their biological mother murdered by local cop/assassin ‘Killer Joe’ (Matthew McConaughey ) in order to claim the life insurance payout. Of course, things don’t pan out as planned and the inevitable downwards spiral of violence and desperation begins. The audience is dragged into their miserable, fear-fuelled lives; increasingly uneasy about their prospects of making it we become enthralled in a tense race to the finish, repeatedly punctuated by ever more twisted acts of aggression, sex and intimidation.
All else aside, this film looks awesome on the big screen – it has a hint of Drive about it but less cool and more gritty. The performances are great, some are incredible - they are difficult parts to play and I was suitably impressed. Despite the barely comprehensibly warped world and insane rollercoaster lives that these characters inhabit, mostly I was convinced by it and I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes a cult hit. Their world is revealed to be consistently cruel and as the story unfolds you search in vain for the expected redeeming feature/s. Instead you are left reeling in shock – not only at what is happening but also the characters’ acceptance of it. They are all fundamentally flawed and there is a devastating lack of empathy between them – even the protagonist, our ‘hero’ (if someone who decides to have his own mother assassinated can be considered a hero, but he is the closest thing we have and I found myself rooting for him), gets little support from his family when his life is in danger from the local heavies. In fact, it barely concerns them. Life is apparently less valuable than we were led to believe.
Now, I love a gritty genre movie as much as the next person, and I’m a sucker for the noir ‘look’. My problem is that I left the cinema unable to work out what the point was. I kept waiting for the payoff, the lesson to be learnt, the thing that justifies all this craziness. I’m still waiting. Maybe I’ve been conditioned to expect this and it’s an unreasonable criticism. I think the only thing I took away is that it reminds us humans can be fundamentally cruel, selfish and violent (but it tells us this very stylishly, so I guess that makes it OK). Sure, they all live in a pretty horrible world where it’s a struggle to survive – they’re painfully poor and lacking any opportunity to change that – but maybe they’d have a better chance if it would only stop raining for a minute, or the dog could quit barking long enough for someone to hear themselves think. Perhaps then they would bother to get dressed in the mornings instead of walking round their trailer half naked, literally.
OK fine, maybe I should get over it – there doesn’t need to be a point. I suppose my main frustration is that the storyline is so extreme that the movie would have been more effective if it was toned down. By the end the characters are all revealed to be such nutbags that the last sequence is completely surreal. It didn’t shock me as much as it could because I didn’t quite believe it.
So – I would recommend Killer Joe (although not to the faint hearted). It will probably make you very uncomfortable (there’s something wrong with you if it doesn’t), but there’s some merit in that, right? Failing that, go and see it for the great cinematography, awesome performances, intriguing lack of music and a whole new perspective on Matthew McConaughey. But definitely don’t go see it with your mum (or your mom).
I guess I did have something to say after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment