Killer Joe cruised right under my radar in 2012, and I bet a lot of people don't know about it. Despite a high profile cast featuring Matthew McConaughey and Juno Temple. Not to mention Gina Gershon, Emile Hirshe, and Thomas Haden Church. Credit it to director William Friedkin's fall from Hollywood grace and its kiss of death NC-17 rating.
McConaughey takes the lead as a Dallas police detective whose side business is murder for hire. He is approached by a truly repellent trailer trash family of miscreants. A son, played by Hirsch, desperately needs money to avoid being killed over a drug debt. Church is the father who only seems to care where his next drink is coming from. Gershon is his slattern wife with some nasty secrets. Then there is the adult-child daughter, slightly simple, but with a heart, played with courage by Juno Temple.
They want to kill Church's ex-wife for the insurance money. Since they have no down payment for Killer Joe, they turn over their virginal daughter to him. "It will probably do her some good", remarks Church.
Do these things ever go right in thrillers?
The insurance money scam fails and Joe wants to collect in full ownership of his young love. Things get complicated from there.
Killer Joe is a devastating portrait of poor white trashy people whose lives revolve around drunken desperation. Violence, casual drug and alcohol misuse, sordid sex, disregard for human life. Dignity is a joke. These people couldn't even spell the word.
Imagine a pulpish modern noir written by Joe R. Lansdale, but possibly even more lurid. McConaughey has never been better. Temple shows just how versatile an actor she is. Church plays a zombie-like alcoholic to perfection, and you just want to shoot the Hirsch character like a rabid dog. Gina Gershon might give the most risky performance of her career in a most unglamourous role.
Then there's the sex scene with a K-Fry-C chicken leg that might make you cover your eyes. It's that gross.
Yet the screenplay is literate and intelligent. Acclaimed playwright Tracy Lett adapted it from his own work.
William Friedkin never really recovered from the failure of Sorcerer. It's a brilliant movie but it went way over budget and lost a fortune at the box office. Friedkin made a slight rebound with To Live and Die in L.A., but he was mostly relegated to B pictures in the last thirty years of his life. Killer Joe is an example of the fearless integrity he showed early in his career with The French Connection and The Exorcist.
McConaughey takes the lead as a Dallas police detective whose side business is murder for hire. He is approached by a truly repellent trailer trash family of miscreants. A son, played by Hirsch, desperately needs money to avoid being killed over a drug debt. Church is the father who only seems to care where his next drink is coming from. Gershon is his slattern wife with some nasty secrets. Then there is the adult-child daughter, slightly simple, but with a heart, played with courage by Juno Temple.
They want to kill Church's ex-wife for the insurance money. Since they have no down payment for Killer Joe, they turn over their virginal daughter to him. "It will probably do her some good", remarks Church.
Do these things ever go right in thrillers?
The insurance money scam fails and Joe wants to collect in full ownership of his young love. Things get complicated from there.
Killer Joe is a devastating portrait of poor white trashy people whose lives revolve around drunken desperation. Violence, casual drug and alcohol misuse, sordid sex, disregard for human life. Dignity is a joke. These people couldn't even spell the word.
Imagine a pulpish modern noir written by Joe R. Lansdale, but possibly even more lurid. McConaughey has never been better. Temple shows just how versatile an actor she is. Church plays a zombie-like alcoholic to perfection, and you just want to shoot the Hirsch character like a rabid dog. Gina Gershon might give the most risky performance of her career in a most unglamourous role.
Then there's the sex scene with a K-Fry-C chicken leg that might make you cover your eyes. It's that gross.
Yet the screenplay is literate and intelligent. Acclaimed playwright Tracy Lett adapted it from his own work.
William Friedkin never really recovered from the failure of Sorcerer. It's a brilliant movie but it went way over budget and lost a fortune at the box office. Friedkin made a slight rebound with To Live and Die in L.A., but he was mostly relegated to B pictures in the last thirty years of his life. Killer Joe is an example of the fearless integrity he showed early in his career with The French Connection and The Exorcist.
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