Joe

Joe (2013)

Where our children turn when their parents let them down is one of the most troubling areas for fact and fiction both. Nicolas Cage's checkered career doesn't diminish his strong, heartfelt performance here as Joe, leading a group of workers in the deep woods of some Deep South state doing illegal tree killing. But that's just backdrop, because a teenager, Gary, comes along looking for work, seemingly just from some patch of these rural woods or one of the little backwards towns nearby.

Joe has issues with violence and alcohol, but he's a truly good person deep down below all the conflicts and bad judgments, and he learns that Gary has an abusive father and troubled family. And he gradually gets involved. As this intersection grows, we learn more about Joe's world in the town, about some other guys who have it out for him, and about his sense of honor. It's that kind of world where government of all kinds, including the police, is considered unnecessary to the point of being bad, and instead people have a kind of independence that is sometimes admirable and sometimes pure belligerence.

That's the part of the movie I liked much more than I expected, and was what I took away above all—the portrayal of a kind of life and a kind of people, told with an odd kind of honesty that works.

It doesn't just reside there, however. The plot becomes highly dramatic, even sensational, as some of the shifty characters get motivated to get really violent. There is even a point when it gets so hairy for Joe he does something unthinkable until now—he calls the cops. You'll see, it's an odd turning point. So this vengeance and violence make the plot have teeth, I suppose, and it's fine, but I actually sense another movie that didn't get made here that was toned down two steps and had all these elements and yet kept the focus on the real grit.

And there's Gary, who is a pretty decent kid somehow (his father is about as bad as fathers can get, but his mom had some influence, I guess). We can finally see how a kid can escape a family horror and move on, while growing up and becoming a decent person, maybe another Joe, which oddly enough the world needs. It's worth watching just for all these things. Give it twenty minutes to develop, and it'll click.

In the South of the USA, the foreman Joe (Nicolas Cage) works with his black crew poisoning trees for the farmers to clean the field. Joe has a trauma, since he spent almost three years in prison for assaulting an abusive police officer. As the result, he has troubles with the police and he is emotionally detached from people. He spends most of his time drinking and smoking to control his nerves or with a whore and his dog. When the strong fifteen year-old Gary (Tye Sheridan) looks for a job with Joe, he notes that the teenager is a hard-worker and befriends him. But he also realizes that his abusive alcoholic father G-Daawg (Gary Poulter) is a scumbag. When G-Daawg associates to the also scum Willie-Russell (Ronnie Gene Blevins), he crosses a line with no point of return and Joe decides to protect Gary and his family.

"Joe" is a low-budget movie with magnificent performance of the uneven Nicolas Cage in his best role in the last films. The dramatic and realistic story of redemption of a good man is crude and never corny. The excellent direction and performances and the original screenplay keep the attention of the viewer until the very last scene. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Joe"

David Gordon Green, who's versatile career has swung from the sublime ('Snow Angels' & 'Undertow) to the completely absurd ('Pineapple Express' & 'Your Highness'), has swung back once again with this adaptation of Larry Brown's bleak novel, 'Joe'. The thriller follows the lives of country drifters surviving on the fringes of modern America's mid-west. The title character, played by Nicolas Cage, is a man with a troubled past and a short temper that has found a respectable - if teetering - balance in life. When he hires a young drifter, played by Tye Sheridan ('The Tree of Life' / 'Mud') as a day-laborer and tries to take the boy under his wing, that balance begins to tip when the boy's vagabond father becomes jealous of his income and his friendship with Joe. This is a film about fighting against your own nature and, though his more serious roles are often overshadowed by his over-the-top gonzo-ness, this is, by far, Cage's most subtle success to date. Don't worry though, he still gives the camera 'crazy-eyes' at least once.

There's a quote about midway through David Gordon Green's Joe that I believe is crucial to understanding the film's thematic core. Forgive me if I'm paraphrasing but it goes something like 'These men have no more frontiers'. The line is in reference to the men Joe works with and in many ways applies to the titular character himself. Joe is a man that knows he is stuck; he has no where to go because his surroundings can't let him. Even though he thinks five steps ahead of the average man it is only delaying the inevitable. The conflict of the story however is not whether or not Joe lives but if he can save the future of a promising child, named Gary.

Joe is the kind of film that proves that a small story can be much more meaningful than a larger one. This kind of unsentimental character piece needs a small tight focus so all of the nuances of said characters shines through. Thankfully David Gordon Green understands this; his approach to directing the film is subtle and organic, allowing the actors to shine first and foremost. There are some understated flourishes and several instances of visual poetry but for the most part Green keeps things taut and unsentimental. He wants the audience to be immersed in the volatile world Gary and Joe inhabit.

And what a convincing world it is. Green's depiction of Southern lower class Americana is unsentimental, austere and straightforward. The film doesn't feel the need to overemphasize aspects of these characters live. Nothing is glamorized, nothing romanticized; the film aims for a hard hitting depiction of the character's world which only serves to further highlight the core conflict. Green understands that the audience needs to understand how close Gary and his sister are to harm and in doing so has crafted a thoroughly realized community teeming with details and nuances.

But the real centerpiece of the film is it's acting; three performances in particular stick out. Cage's Joe, Sheridan's Gary and Gary Poulter's Wade. Cage's depiction of Joe is not quite the subdued performance many critics made it out to be. Instead it is a silent colossus of a performance. One of Cage's biggest strengths as an actor is the ability to convey a character's thought process without saying a word. He makes a perfect fit for Joe; a man who is always moving, thinking, never given to slowing down. He is a frank straightforward man and Cage does the character justice. Equally excellent is Sheridan's Gary. Coming off his sterling performance in Mud, Sheridan proves himself one of the most promising actors of the younger generation. He brings balances both the character's more mature and intelligent feelings and ambitions with a raw, primal rage that surfaces in a truly explosive manner. Finally we have Gary Poulter, the dark horse of this movie. A non-actor Poulter was hired due to his similarity to the character he was portraying. And boy does he nail it. Seething with a kind of disheveled rage, imbued with a selfish nostalgic anger for a time he had a future; Wade is a truly terrifying character only made more terrifying by Poulter's raw, thoroughly convincing performance. If Joe is symbolizes a man in societal stagnation, Wade is that stagnation taken to it's logical, horrific end.

Joe is a gritty, hard movie about gritty hard people but it's also intelligent, heartfelt and riveting from the first frame to the last. It solidifies the comeback for David Gordon Green as a unique presence in American cinema and hopefully is a sign that Cage will do more of these kinds of austere, gripping character pieces more often in the future.

9/10

Nicholas Cage still has got it! The man can still act, he only needs a good screenplay and a decent director.

The good: solid acting performances in a bleak, hardhitting, true to life story about going down the drain.

It's a slowburning story, but a REAL one and however depressing it might be, it is touching as well.

Recommended for the arthouse movie fans.