Depravity and family dysfunction combine for a can't-look-away experience

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Matthew McConaughey as Killer Joe Cooper. (INDEPENDENT PICTURES)

Movie review

Killer Joe

• Starring Emile Hirsch and Matthew McConaughey
• Grant Park
• 18A
• 103 minutes
• 3 1/2 stars out of five

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Gina Gershon and Thomas Haden Church.

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Emile Hirsch and Juno Temple.

Director William Friedkin may be best known for The Exorcist, a film about supernatural evil afflicting the innocent.

Killer Joe, Friedkin's latest film in a wildly fluctuating career, is a comparatively low-budget, non-studio film concerned with entirely earthly matters.

People behave very badly indeed in this film, even the presumed innocent. And the devil isn't making them do it.

The first scene sets the stage nicely. Chris (Emile Hirsch) is a dime-store drug dealer who shows up at his dad's trailer home (cue pit bull barking in the rain outside) in crisis. Chris needs money to pay off a fearsome (yet strangely affable) loan shark. Chris's mother has stolen his drug stash.

In order to pay off his loan, Chris has contrived a scheme to kill mom and divide the $50,000 insurance money among his dense dad Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), his trampy, pants-optional stepmom Sharla (Gina Gershon) and his aptly named sister Dottie (Juno Temple), not quite right in the head since her mom tried to suffocate her as an infant.

To accomplish this, the family needs the outside assistance of the title character, Killer Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a comparatively smart Dallas police detective with a sideline in the business of murder-for-hire.

Because the family can't pay Joe in advance, the deal would fall through. But Joe experiences a stirring of creepy desire for the beautiful, fey Dottie, and negotiates the murder with the girl as collateral.

Even Dottie goes along with this arrangement, but Chris, his sense of panic increasing, has second thoughts when some deep vestige of sibling loyalty kicks in.

Killer Joe was scripted by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts (August: Osage County), who gleefully offers up a family portrait etched in acid. Family, yes. Values, no.

The 18A classification indicates that the film's content is not recommended for anyone looking for a relaxing evening at the movies. It gets pretty brutal. Consider yourself warned.

But there is much to love here, too. Church is a very smart actor who excels at playing dumb. In a scene in which Ansel visits an insurance office with Sharla, this quality is played for laughs. In the film's grim finale, Church offers a stunning display of beta-male submission.

Gershon does some of her best work as a low-cunning succubus. Temple boldly straddles the line between innocence and familial perversity. It's especially gratifying to see Hirsch tackle a meaty role after his half-hearted attempt at action heroism in last year's The Darkest Hour.

But you have to give props to McConaughey. He can be repellent as a leading man, but when the character he plays is actually repellent, he becomes weirdly captivating. (See also: Tropic Thunder and The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.)

Friedkin directs them all with old-school Hollywood-honed skill, even if this is the antithesis of an old-school Hollywood movie. Indeed, this may be the most vivid expression of Friedkin's feel-bad misanthropy since To Live and Die in L.A.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Other voices

Selected excerpts from reviews of Killer Joe:

If you like your movies filled with twisted humour, sexual perversion, psychological intimidation and sudden violence, Killer Joe is the flick for you.

-- Tom Long, Detroit News

You will either love Killer Joe or run away screaming. I absorbed this nail bomb with awestruck admiration.

-- Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

(Friedkin) has retained his touch ... all these years later. And in Matthew McConaughey, he has the perfect vehicle for madness.

-- Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

You end up feeling sorry for all the actors forced to humiliate themselves, except for McConaughey, whose portrayal of sadistic, manipulative evil is mesmerizing.

-- Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald

If y'all like your comedy with a Lone Star drawl and as black as Texas tea, then by all means tuck right into Killer Joe.

-- Bruce Demara, Toronto Star

It's as mean as a snake.

-- Ty Burr, Boston Globe

Like a deep-fried Twinkie at the State Fair of Texas, Killer Joe is gooey, flavourful and bad for you. Dig in.

-- Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News

Out of the muck and mire of human depravity that is Killer Joe, something magnificent comes: a killer performance by Matthew McConaughey.

-- Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times

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.

-- Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

The bone-crunchingly violent film has luridly entertaining moments. But by its resolution, this sleazy Southern gothic nightmare has simply gone off the rails.

-- Claudia Puig, USA Today

Killer Joe is one hell of a movie. It left me speechless. I can't say I loved it. I can't say I hated it.

-- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Friedkin make no attempt to soften the characters' monstrousness, and thank hell for that. This is rave and rage and purge acting.

-- David Edelstein, New York magazine

A sleazy and pointless film about sleazy and pointless people, Killer Joe reminds us that what Quentin Tarantino does isn't easy.

-- Kyle Smith, New York Post

Killer Joe is, at bottom -- and I mean bottom -- ugly and vile, not to mention dumb and clumsy.

-- Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

One of the three best performances of McConaughey's career.

-- Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com

-- Compiled by Shane Minkin

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 7, 2012 D1