The hardest thing to describe is tone, but it's the thing that most sets "Killer Joe" apart and makes it one of the most interesting and satisfying movies of the year so far. It is a tale of white trash immorality on a grand scale, of people who are ridiculous and yet dangerous, laughable but cunning, and really stupid ... yet sneaky. So the movie lands in an original zone in which the violence is real and the events are shocking and unexpected, but there's a distance there - the distance that allows for laughs.
The distance is also present in the performances. Matthew McConaughey plays a paid killer, and he has an eerie stillness about him and a skewed way of speaking and reacting that suggests something off, something corrupt and in touch with the darkest elements in the universe. Yet at the same time, we are always aware that we are watching McConaughey putting on a mask for our amusement.
The same can be said for Thomas Haden Church as the dim-witted patriarch, Gina Gershon as his louche wife and Emile Hirsch, usually smart and scrubbed, who here plays Haden Church's son, a scruffy dunce. All the actors are both in their roles and standing to the side presenting them, and somehow this seems very right for "Killer Joe" and a shrewd choice on the part of William Friedkin, the director. The one exception to this - also a shrewd choice - is Juno Temple, who plays the teenage daughter dead-on as innocent and peculiar and too damaged to be truly knowable.
The movie is based on the play by Tracy Letts ("Bug," "August: Osage County"), who is also an actor and knows how to write roles that actors want to play. So from the beginning - when Chris (Hirsch) shows up at his father's door and his stepmother (Gershon) answers the door naked from the waist down - there is never a moment without some bizarre turn of thought or action.
Speaking of the nudity, "Killer Joe" is rated NC-17, and yet even considering the naked Gershon, the strong language and a lewd, disturbing scene involving a chicken leg, the rating seems harsh. Or at least it does when you consider that the nihilistic "The Dark Knight Rises" got away with a PG-13.
"Killer Joe" revolves around a moneymaking scheme, a sick one, in which a son contrives to have his mother murdered and enlists his father and sister in the plot. The goal is to collect on the insurance money, and to make sure the murder is done professionally, they bring in a police detective known as Killer Joe, who moonlights as a killer for hire. So for much of the movie we have the spectacle of a family of dirty, dirt-poor wannabe-evil imbeciles interacting with this cold, gleaming, impeccably attired exemplar of the real thing, who is invariably polite and yet capable of doing anything to anybody at any moment.
This is old-time country noir, a Baroque expression of the American id, and a knowing bloodbath that's pulpy, heightened and twisted fun. Whenever the characters seem as if they can't possibly get more appalling, they do. It's brilliantly written - it might be a guilty pleasure otherwise - and yet something about "Killer Joe" keeps it this side of greatness and more in the realm of a dazzling stunt.
Still, to be fair, most stunts fizzle out before the finish, but "Killer Joe" maintains its invention and energy all the way through the final seconds. The ending is the best of both worlds - a surprise in the moment and, upon reflection, inevitable.
Rating : 4/5
Movie Review Killer Joe English 2012, English Movie Review
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