Brutal, pulpy and lurid. That sums up the irresistible allure of Killer Joe – provided, that is, you find deep-fried perversity to be irresistible. The second collaboration between director William Friedkin and writer Tracy Letts (their first being 2006’s Bug) serves up trailer-trash noir as savage as it is savagely funny.
You will be forgiven if you don’t appreciate the joke. Letts’ first stage play rolls around in the muck, and Friedkin, the director of The Exorcist and Cruising, isn’t one to shy away from pushing boundaries. Violent and gleefully depraved, Killer Joe was promptly slapped with an NC-17 rating when it went before the Motion Picture Association. After minor edits failed to cajole the MPAA into opting for an R, Friedkin accepted the commercial death knell of the NC-17 and released the uncut version, complete with its almost unbearably discomfiting third act and its twisted take on a fried chicken dinner.
It was OK with Friedkin. “Killer Joe is loved and hated. Praised and denounced,” the director wrote in his 2013 memoir, The Friedkin Connection. “But it’s the film I wanted to make and I’m proud of it and it found a small audience of passionate devotees.”
The movie’s over-the-top aesthetic is evident from the git-go In the midst of a furious Texas thunderstorm, lowlife drug dealer Chris (Emile Hirsch) bangs on the door of a double-wide trailer belonging to his drunkard father, Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), and stepmother, Sharia (Gina Gershon), demanding to be let in. Sharia finally opens the door wearing nothing from the waist down, portending the shaggy storyline that follows.
Chris explains to his dad that he’s in debt to a local crime boss and unable to pay it back because his mother, Ansel’s ex-wife, stole the stash of cocaine he had been planning to sell. But Chris has a backup plan to pay the debt. He proposes to Ansel that they hire a contract killer to murder the mother for her $50,000 life insurance policy. The woman’s sole beneficiary is Dottie (Juno Temple), Chris’ younger sister who lives with Ansel and Sharia. Ansel, who appears to be as smart as spittle, thinks it sounds like a good idea.
They turn to hit man Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), who runs his unsavory side business when he’s not on the job as a Dallas police detective. A coolly professional psychopath, Joe tells the father-son conspirators that they must first fork over his $25,000 retainer fee, which, not surprisingly they don’t have.
Just when it looks like the deal is off, Joe gets another look at the virginal Dottie outfitted in Daisy Dukes and with a mop of blonde hair piled atop her head. Joe is
willing to negotiate a retainer in return for “dating” Dottie. Chris and Ansel readily agree.
Family loyalty, one might surmise, is scarce in the scuzzy universe of Killer Joe. Intelligence isn’t much of a commodity, either, with characters whose greed is rivaled only by their stupidity. That directive doesn’t make things easy on Hirsch, a smart actor who seems too sharp to be entirely convincing as Chris.
The rest of the cast is superb. Temple, long before her winning turns in TV’s Ted Lasso and Fargo, aptly channels the woman-girl spirit of Carroll Baker circa Baby Doll. She brings a level of innocence that likely would not have been there with, say, Jennifer Lawrence, who had been up for the part until having to drop out. Church makes a perfect lunkhead while Gershon turns in a fierce, and unquestionably fearless, performance.
Killer Joe proved to be an early revelation about McConaughey, whom Friedkin cast after Kurt Russell passed. McConaughey’s steely-eyed psycho, coming on the heels of strong showings earlier in 2011 with Bernie and Magic Mike, taps into a well of menace that the actor didn’t have much opportunity to explore in subpar romantic comedies. In Killer Joe, he is charismatic, terrifying and downright funny.
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 