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Killer Joe evokes the hardboiled regional poetry of Jim Thompson (pop. 1280, The Killer Inside Me) and William Faulkner (who supplies the poetic epigraph), flirts with outright exploitation, provides game actors with roles to relish, and finds the heart of darkness in a bucket of Fried Chicken.
Their adaptation leaves the Tracy Lett's source play almost untouched. )Letts and Friedkin previously adapted Letts' play, Bug, with Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon.) A few choice locations open up the Dallas, Texas outskirts but the real meat and inevitable massacre still occur in the pressure-cooker confines of a family trailer home. Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (Being There, The Right Stuff) employs a grease-stained Edward Hopper vibe refracted by tawdry and cartoonish fluorescents, and the atmosphere is all noir jazz bassline, thunderstorms, blazing trash-can fires, restless pitbulls, and Gina Gershon’s casual crotchbearing. Letts convinced Friedkin to preserve this charming introductory detail in an eight-page memo bearing the advice “Don’t be afraid of the p****.”
Meet the Smiths: paterfamilias Ansel, played by a hysterical Thomas Haden Church (Sideways), an oaf in a union suit, too lost in a haze of pot and monster-truck rallies to pay heed to the nude preening of his wife Sharla (Gershon) or the troubles of his hapless son Chris (Emile Hirsch). His daughter, 20-year-old babydoll/Carroll Bakeresque, Dottie (Juno Temple, of Sin City fame and daughter of filmmaker, Julien Temple), is prone to sleepwalking out of her bedroom safe haven of snowglobes and stuffed animals to coo (occasionally lucid) non sequiturs. Chris and Dottie’s mother has been dipping into Chris’s coke stash, the sale of which was to pay off a debt to a local kingpin.
So it is decided, with minimal philosophical or logistical debate, that the conspicuously off-screen matriarch must die. A $50,000 life insurance policy can cover the cost of hiring the eponymous cop (Matthew McConaughey), who moonlights as a courteous hit man. The remainder is hardly starting-over money, not that any of these folks has a concrete plan beyond living a bit better than before. There is no on-screen rumination or reflection in this amoral vacuum, just savage emotions and primal call-and-response. These people aren’t too stupid to live, just too stupid to succeed.
Dottie is the virginal sacrifice (very explicit) in lieu of an advance for Killer Joe’s services. When Joe looks at Dottie, Friedkin backlights her unbrushed hair into a halo of hope amidst the crossfire of betrayals and bad ideas. McConaughey has taken notes from Robert Mitchum’s Night of the Hunter: avoiding a fullblown cowboy-hat-and-sunglasses camp cartoon. Joe is both sadistic monster and angel of vengeance, greedy predator and tender lover. He is, perhaps, the hero of this sordid tale. Friedkin and Letts possess a bold oldschool faith in familiar pulp tropes and down-and-dirty dialogue, re-creating the sort of electric clash between hyperrealism and hallucination, horror and farce, rarely seen since the best B-movie of yesteryear. Such deep-fried depravity used to be a guaranteed seat-filler for a certain kind of audience: Drive
-ins and grindhouse, but these days, slapped with an NC-17, it seems downright avant-garde. Killer Joe closes with the disco-blues sermon “Strokin’” as Clarence Carter leads listeners in an ecstatic release of raw, rural libidinal energy. It is the perfect punctuation to this exuberant white-trash Gothic. Friedkin and Letts are similarly unapologetic about their noboundaries ride on the raging blue-collar id, and unafraid to play it for both laughs and genuine feeling.
The Blu-ray presentation comes with a sharp 1080p transfer and DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio track. both not ground-breaking but very clear and sharp. Since this film was released NC-17 in theaters, the film arrives on Blu-ray in this Unrated Director’s Cut. There is also an R-rated DVD included - for those who need it. The Unrated Director’s Cut features an excellent commentary track from director William Friedkin, highly recommended - he's got The gift of the gab.The rest of the special features are decent but not spectacular. There is a featurette called “Southern Fried Hospitality: From Stage to Screen”, takes us through from the beginning. Besides that there is some footage from SXSW including a Q&A with Cast and an intro by William Friedkin. Also features a "white trash" Red Band trailer. Great English subtitles, too.
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December 21, 2012 "Please retry" | DVD | 1 | $9.99 | $4.00 |
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Top reviews from other countries
Spike Owen
William Friedkin serves up Trailer Trash Neo-Noir with a side order of Fried Chicken.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 28, 2012