Joe (15.)
Directed by David Gordon Green.
Starring Nicholas Cage, Tye Sheridan, Gary Poulter, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Adrienne Mishler and Aj Wilson McPhaul. 117 mins
Playing Joe, a hard-working, hard drinking ex-con living in the rust belt American South, Nicholas Cage has been removed from his usual milieu of haltingly spoken heroic declamation and donkey faced German Expressionism. Instead he has been plopped down in something resembling the real world and asked to associate with real people. In this adaptation of the novel by Larry Brown, Green has placed him among a cast full of non-professionals. It is an attempt to do something honest and true, but it is not an easy fit.
This is not to criticise the performance as such. Cage is an actor whose performances scatter themselves randomly all along the spectrum from inspired to catastrophic and Joe is one that will be placed safely in the positive half, but it doesn’t really work for the film. He’s like the lottery winner who chooses to continue with their menial job despite now being a multi-millionaire; it’s a bogus integrity.
The movie is an example of the kind of red neck tragedy that the American Deep South churns out with the regularity that the East End churns out gangster and football hooligan tales. It has most of the elements: a man fighting his demons; a good kid (Tye Sheridan of Mud and Tree of Life) trying to overcome difficult circumstances; an alcoholic bum father; and degenerate gun totting bad guys. These characters swirl around in a world made up of tattoos, guns, derelict shacks, rusty machinery, perpetual drinking and smoking, and long running feuds.
You know things will end badly but the film takes its time heading off down that route. After 30 minutes Joe gets shot and you think, ah yes here comes the plot, but Joe reacts to the wound on his shoulder like it is just another everyday, pain in the neck aggravation and lights a cigarette before attending to the spurting of the blood.
Joe is fine enough if you like these things but too similar to previous efforts. Green really begun this genre with his early breakthrough dramas like All The Real Girls and Undertow and he finds nothing new to add here, though his habit of casting non-professionals does turn up trumps. Gary Poulter plays the drunk bum father and he is so convincing that you can swear you can actually smell him off the screen. Self-centred and self-pitying, he is an irredeemably foul and hateful creation. When you find out that Poulter was actually a homeless person with substance abuse issues who died a month after filming, it seems a bit tawdry.
Directed by David Gordon Green.
Starring Nicholas Cage, Tye Sheridan, Gary Poulter, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Adrienne Mishler and Aj Wilson McPhaul. 117 mins
Playing Joe, a hard-working, hard drinking ex-con living in the rust belt American South, Nicholas Cage has been removed from his usual milieu of haltingly spoken heroic declamation and donkey faced German Expressionism. Instead he has been plopped down in something resembling the real world and asked to associate with real people. In this adaptation of the novel by Larry Brown, Green has placed him among a cast full of non-professionals. It is an attempt to do something honest and true, but it is not an easy fit.
This is not to criticise the performance as such. Cage is an actor whose performances scatter themselves randomly all along the spectrum from inspired to catastrophic and Joe is one that will be placed safely in the positive half, but it doesn’t really work for the film. He’s like the lottery winner who chooses to continue with their menial job despite now being a multi-millionaire; it’s a bogus integrity.
The movie is an example of the kind of red neck tragedy that the American Deep South churns out with the regularity that the East End churns out gangster and football hooligan tales. It has most of the elements: a man fighting his demons; a good kid (Tye Sheridan of Mud and Tree of Life) trying to overcome difficult circumstances; an alcoholic bum father; and degenerate gun totting bad guys. These characters swirl around in a world made up of tattoos, guns, derelict shacks, rusty machinery, perpetual drinking and smoking, and long running feuds.
You know things will end badly but the film takes its time heading off down that route. After 30 minutes Joe gets shot and you think, ah yes here comes the plot, but Joe reacts to the wound on his shoulder like it is just another everyday, pain in the neck aggravation and lights a cigarette before attending to the spurting of the blood.
Joe is fine enough if you like these things but too similar to previous efforts. Green really begun this genre with his early breakthrough dramas like All The Real Girls and Undertow and he finds nothing new to add here, though his habit of casting non-professionals does turn up trumps. Gary Poulter plays the drunk bum father and he is so convincing that you can swear you can actually smell him off the screen. Self-centred and self-pitying, he is an irredeemably foul and hateful creation. When you find out that Poulter was actually a homeless person with substance abuse issues who died a month after filming, it seems a bit tawdry.
