Review of Joe (2014) by Dawdlingpoet — 25 Nov 2021

This is a drama film which features themes including beating, alcoholism and father to son relationships. Joe is shown to be a fairly well regarded handyman type character from reasonably early on in the film. Some of the other characters are shown to be blaggers and the general tone of the film, in terms of setting and peoples circumstances for the most part, is somewhat bleak and gritty. It is quite a dark film in general, so don't be expecting an easy and joyful watch but hopefully you wouldn't expect that anyway.

The setting is very much deep south America - with characters having distinctive southern 'drawl' type dialects. I felt the plot pace was a little unnecessarily slow, with me wondering when things may speed up a bit or otherwise the direction become a bit clearer but it does do that after a while. I felt it did well at putting across a quite unsettling, tense and eery atmosphere - I felt that some of the characters seemed quite volatile and I was unsure when they may potentially snap. It seemed like one of those films in which the viewer tries to get under the various characters skins, wondering what peoples backgrounds may be and so on. It also seemed a bit of a parable of adolescence, to an extent. I think it'd be fair to say that there's a degree of reliance and expectation from both of the main characters towards the other - that is, Joe and Gary. There is a definite palpable silence present at times, one which you can almost imagine cutting with a knife, as the saying goes.

Cast wise, Nicholas Cage plays the titular character, Joe. This, in my opinion of course, is one of his better more recent roles - he's had a series of films which have flopped in terms of takings I believe and in terms of general reaction by critics and audiences but I felt he was a good pick to play the somewhat rag-tag local handyman type guy. He seems quite apathetic towards others and yet content in himself, to be living a bedraggled existence. Meanwhile, Tye Sheridan plays Gary - I thought he played his role very well too. He is shown to be quite strongly defiant and keen to do whats necessary to help improve himself. At times he can seem quite naive and juvenile but not all the time. Other cast members include Ronnie Gene Blevins as Willie-Russell and Adriene Mishler as Connie.

Content wise, the film contains sex scenes and some sex references, plus some moderate violence, mostly quite bloody. There is an instance of dog fighting, with blood shown on one of them later. There is strong language and various characters are shown drinking alcohol, with Gary's dad being an alcoholic. The film has been given a 15 rating due to this.

I felt it featured a reasonably good use of background or incidental music, which helped add to the tension and eeriness present in some of the scenes. It didn't interfere with following the main dialogue, as some people have (I believed) complained about being the case on TV shows and the like nowadays - I think some new-ish TVs have issues with distinguishing different sound levels but I mostly liked how the background music added to the unsettling sense and tension present at various points in the film.

This is a rather sobering watch - I found myself trying to analyse what exactly we're meant, as viewers, to take away from it. I did feel sorry for Gary, being lumbered with his unpleasant alcoholic father and on ocassion for Joe but not to the same extent but I can't say I felt entirely at the edge of my seat type worried about what may or may not happen to them. It has quite a rural setting, its bleak and gritty in terms of themes and the like, not a 'nice little Hollywood type of a father and son pair up and rule the world' sort of a film, if you know what I mean but its not gritty in terms of it being urban. Still, thats probably beside the point. I thought the characters were just about sufficiently interesting and it was quite tense and, of course, gritty but it could probably have been a bit better, if the script were tweaked a bit as I couldn't help but feel like it seemed to lose its direction. Having said that, I watched it through to the end and I didn't feel entirely prone to giving up and switching to a TV channel, so its not great but its not awful either.

As I say, this is a reasonably watchable film - its got a decent performance from Cage (which can be hard to come by these days - The Wicker Man remake anyone? ugh!) and I thought it was tense and gritty, although it is very much grim in tone and it does suffer from seeming a little directionless at times. I thought it made good use of background music but it could probably have been better if the script were adjusted a bit. I'm not sure I'd especially recommend it, although if it sounds of interest to you and its shown on TV then its probably worth a watch but if it'd cost much money to see, I imagine there are probably better alternatives around.