Review of Joe the King (1999) by Teddy V — 03 Dec 2011

Joe the King is a heartbreaking tale about a young boy, Joe Henry, who is forced to work illegally to help support his alcoholic father's gambling habits. Joe is picked on in school because his father works as the janitor. He is also picked on by a lot of the adults in his life (honestly, every adult in the film was utterly horrible - with the possible exception of Ethan Hawke's character) because of his father's habit of borrowing money and never returning it.

Things have become so dire that Joe often has to source his food from stolen candy boxes or from left-overs in the sink at work. Things are getting worse and worse, and something has to give. The turning point in this film centres around Joe breaking into his place of work and stealing a wad of cash. He spends most of it on records for his mother (who is an avid record collector, but whose collection was obliterated by her drunken husband) and stashes the rest of it. A gash in his leg is what gives him away, and his mother opts to send him to a juvenile detention centre as she has no time to watch after him and make sure that he does the right thing.

Noah Fleiss was fantastic as Joe. The majority of the film centres around Joe's relationship with his father, Bob Henry, and one of the more emotional scenes between the two occurs toward the end of the film just before Joe is taken to the detention centre. Kilmer gave a great performance as an alcoholic - he was a pathetic tiny man trying so hard to be big and tough. It was equal amounts of amusing and saddening. Some of the best scenes in this film involved both Fleiss and Kilmer - defnitely worth a watch for their performances if nothing else.