Killer Joe (2011) Texas Trailer Trash Neo Noir

"I ain't had a thousand dollars my whole life."

Directed by William Friedkin (The French Connection (1971), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985). The screenplay by award winning playwright Tracy Letts and was based on his 1993 play. Cinematography was by Caleb Deschanel and Music by Tyler Bates.

The film stars Matthew McConaughey as "Killer" Joe Cooper, Emile Hirsch as Chris Smith, Juno Temple as Dottie Smith, Gina Gershon as Sharla Smith, Thomas Haden Church as Ansel Smith and Marc Macaulay as Digger Soames.

Matthew McConaughey as "Killer" Joe Cooper

Emile Hirsch as Chris Smith

Gina Gershon as Sharla Smith

Thomas Haden Church as Ansel Smith

 Juno Temple as Dottie Smith

Spring. Rainy season. West Dallas. Lightning. Thunder. Pouring. A real soaker. A shithole trailer park. A barking pit bull straining at his chain. 

A burn barrel. Chris Smith like a wet rat scurries to a mobile home. He bangs on the door and calls for Dottie. The dog barks louder. Chris gets no response. 

He continues his frantic banging until his step mother Sharla wearing nothing but a T-shirt pulls open the door. Chris's face is directly in line with Sharla's bush. It's a nice sleazy touch from Friedkin.

Chris Smith: Open the door!

Chris Smith: Open the door!

Sharla Smith: [answers door, half naked] What?

Chris Smith:  Jesus, put some clothes on! The whole neighborhood can see. Why would you answer the door like that?

Sharla Smith: I didn't know it was you.

Chris has got a problem. The shit hit the fan when his real mother Adele, took his 6 G drug money stash and blew it on fixing up her old Caddy. When he complained about it she tossed him out of the house. He owes that green to town crime boss Digger Jones.

Chris's ruckus of course has awaken up the rest of the Smiths, his father Ansel and his little sister Dottie. Chris asks Ansel for a thousand dollars. Ansel tells him he's never seen a thousand dollars in his life. Chris tells Ansel that he's got a plan and asks him to step outside to the pickup so that they can talk in private.

Out in the rain. In the pickup. Chris tells Ansel his plan. Rex, Adele's current boyfriend told Chris that Adele has a fifty thousand buck life insurance policy with Dottie as the sole beneficiary. He also tells Chris that he knows a DPD officer who moonlights as a contract hitman and goes by the name of "Killer" Joe Cooper. Rex tells Chris that he can whack Adele and make it look like an accident for 20 G's. Dottie who hates her mother, overhears the whole thing and tells them she's down with it. 

So, while we are discussing nicknames in our little Trailer Trash Tragedy, this would be a good time to give out a few of my own to the rest. Chris the Chump. Shameless Sharla. Rutting Rex. Delectable Dottie. Aimless Ansel. 

The plan is to arrange Adele have an accident collect the $50,000 pay Killer Joe his fee and split the rest between Clueless, Aimless, and Delectable. Aimless tells Clueless that he has to include Shameless in any split. Clueless at first objects but comes around seeing as how he's got no choice. 

Clueless and Aimless set up a meeting with Killer at a pool hall. It doesn't go well when Killer finds out they got no scratch.

 He's about split when he spots Delectable doing some homegrown balletic dance out in the street. Killer spins around and goes back into the pool hall.

Killer tells Clueless and Aimless that he'll take Delectable as a retainer. Its Desperate Living 2011. Sure why not. Problems over. Killer gets quality time with Delectable, Digger won't kill Clueless. 

Now the only problem is getting Delectable to agree with it. Aimless tells her she's got to go on a "date" with Killer. To sweeten the pot Aimless tells Delectable she can buy a new dress at the "Thrifty." 

Everything goes seriously Noirsville when, after Killer kills Adele, Clueless, Aimless, and Shameless, find out at the attorneys office, that Ruttin Rex, surprise, surprise, surprise, is the real beneficiary to Adele's policy rather than Delectable and they are all shit out of luck

Noirsville

Chris Smith: Hi Digger.

Digger Soames: How ya been, boy?

Chris Smith: Pretty good, how about yourself?

Digger Soames: Oh, fair to middling. Blood pressure.

Chris Smith: You taking medicine?

Digger Soames: Yeah, all that. No salt, low stress. Course, Amy keeps making that fried chicken. You know I can't resist it.

Chris Smith: How is Amy?

Digger Soames: Well, she's all busted up right at the moment. You remember Dumpling, that old bluetick we had?

Chris Smith: Yeah, sure, Dumpling.

Digger Soames: Yeah, well, we had to put him to sleep yesterday morning.

Chris Smith: Oh, no.

Digger Soames: Yup. Well, you missed yourself a hell of a party a couple of weeks ago.

Chris Smith: Sorry I missed your birthday.

Digger Soames: Well, I'm glad you missed my birthday. I just wish you hadn't missed the party. How many people we have out there at the place, G-Man?

G-Man: A couple hundred.

Digger Soames: Oh, hell, it wasn't that many.

G-Man: 150 anyway.

Digger Soames: No shit.

Chris Smith: Sorry I missed it.

Digger Soames: Yeah, good old party. Lots of barbeque. Hey, G-Man here, he played the accordion. Hey, wasn't that gal out there? The one that's always sniffing around Chris's shit here. What the hell's her name? The one with the great big caboose on her.

Chris Smith: Arlene?

Digger Soames: Yeah, Arlene! You'd better look out for her, boy. She may be too much woman for you.

Chris Smith: Well, she'd better stay away from the barbeque or she'll be too much woman to fit through the door.

Digger Soames: Haha! Damn, you make me laugh. Hey, listen, I'm just gonna have the boys here kick the shit out of you. You'd better pay me my money in a couple of days or I'm gonna wrap you up in electrician tape and bury you in a coffin about 10 feet deep. Huh? I'll tell Amy you asked about her. That'll make her smile.

G-Man: [G-man and Biker Thug advance towards Chris] He really likes you.

And later.....

Killer Joe Cooper: I mean all she did was suck his cock and try and steal your money. It could have been worse.

Ansel Smith: How?

Killer Joe Cooper: Well... no, I suppose that's about as bad as it gets.

All the performances are excellent. Everyone is believably dysfunctional. All the actors have finely dialed in trashy. Emile Hirsch has hick homey down pat. Thomas Haden Church is easy come easy go coasting through life. McConaughey is doing an Angel Eyes. Juno Temple nails Daisy Mae virginal jail bait, and Gina Gershon does round heels town slut/pump to perfection. 

I'm reminded of some of the friends and some of the over the top characters that were in and about the shit holes I've lived in out West. 

The Waters brothers. They never washed their dishes. Just scrapped them off and stuck them in the freezer till the next meal. They also used to sweep like buzzards through the state line roadhouse on Friday and Saturday nights. It was called the Lil Oprey. They'd works their way through the place systematically grazing the empty tables of those that were dancing. Grabbing a slice of pizza here, guzzling what was left out of a longneck there. It was so perfected that if you weren't paying attention it looked like they were just nonchalantly walking across the barroom.

I'm sure some of the rest of you have run into similar folks. Friedkin just ratchets up the over the top trashiness to Olympian levels. Bravo  8/10

21 June 2012 | by CuriosityKilledShawn  (IMDb)

William Friedkin's career has been up and down most of his career, I guess it's because he refuses to sell-out and go commercial. His most 'Hollywood' film to date has been The Hunted, from 2003, but even that was unusually muted for a film of that type.

His latest effort is yet another adaptation of a Tracy Lett's play (that's a male Tracy), after Bug in 2006, and is choc full of warped, in-your-face sexuality, bloody violence, and humor so dark only the most depraved viewers will find funny. In fact, it's more like a David Cronenberg film than Friedkin.

If you've seen movies like The Acid House, or the 1998 Todd Solondz face-punch Happiness and find them amusing through the gaps in your fingers then you'll be sick enough to fully enjoy Killer Joe.

Matthew McConaughey plays Joe Cooper, an unorthodox Dallas police detective who is 'hired' by petty drug dealer Emile Hirsch to whack his old lady and thus benefit from an insurance policy with his deadbeat dad (Thomas Haden Church in a wonderful performance) and virginal, oddball sister Dottie (Juno Temple). Only they cannot raise the money to pay Joe so he agrees to spend some quality time with Dottie until the policy pays off in waiver of his upfront fee.

It reminded me a lot of an Oliver Stone film called U-Turn, another Texas-based psycho-sexual murder plot filled with heat-waves and perpetual distrust, but was much more enjoyable. The perverse sexuality and dark humor really appeal to a mind like mine, and McConaughey's performance atones for his crimes in various awful romcoms. Joe is a supremely weird but mesmerizing character. You never really know what he's going to do next but you can still see the cogs turning as he evaluates every new plot twist. Plus it has full-frontal nudity from Gina Gershon and Juno Temple, which I absolutely do not disagree with.

The film has been slapped with the dreaded NC-17 in the US, which massively limits the amount of theatres that will be showing it. But, indirectly, it will only turn it into a cult film, and thus a bigger success with its intended audience than it otherwise might have been.

I highly recommend that you a part of that audience, it's as far from Hollywood as Friedkin has gotten since Cruising in 1980. Even at the age of 76, he's still on top form.