Movie Review: "Joe"

"Joe": B+.  The  title character of the movie Joe has to be one of the most complex and interesting characters of this nascent cinema season.  He is an ex-con who (we learn two-thirds of the way through the story) served a prison term of twenty-nine months for assaulting a police officer.  Joe explains the situation to fifteen year old Gary Jones, telling the teenager that he felt his life was in danger when several cops were ready to shoot him as a suspect for a crime he didn't commit.  Since his release from the state pen several years ago, Joe has established himself as a respected citizen of his rural Texas town, the owner of a small business which he operates out of his ramshackle GMC truck.  He employs a half dozen black men who seem to speak in a foreign language; probably just English with a Louisiana Cajun twist.  The men assist Joe in his tree-pruning, land clearing enterprise.  Joe pays his workers in cash, an honest wage for an honest week's work.  Since being released from his incarceration, Joe has turned over a new leaf, or at least he's tried to. He's even buddies with Earl (Aj Wilson McPhaul), the County Sheriff.

I hadn't seen Nicholas Cage since his turn as an honest policeman in the 1994 romantic dramedy, It Could Happen To You.  He has enjoyed steady work since then, but not in movies I desired to attend.  Cage is a natural fit as Joe, a quiet, thinking man who struggles to control the occasional impulsive outburst.  When Joe feels the crisis of the moment overwhelming him, or his latent anger about to erupt, he seeks comfort in the local brothel, where he is a regular.  Those visits provide some of the film's humor.  Joe stops in there as if it was just one of many errands he needed to run, like stopping in at the Coleman Grocery to stock up on food and smokes, or grabbing a quick meal at the local diner.

Tye Sheridan, whose work in Mud (reviewed here on June, 2013, A-) I lauded, once again delivers a masterful performance as Gary.  Gary's sad situation is revealed in the opening scene, as he and his totally inebriated father, Wade (Gary Poulter), have a physical confrontation, the first of many we see throughout the two hour movie.  Indeed, Gary's face is bruised in most scenes, the result of beatings by his raging drunk father.  Gary's mother and mute sister live a miserable life of fear and desperation, always trying to avoid the fury of Wade, aka "G-Daawg," seen frequently rummaging through their crumbling shack looking for hidden money and stashed alcohol.

One day Gary asks Joe for a job, and Joe immediately puts him to work on a trial basis.  The other employees teach Gary the ropes.  They also offer words of advice on how to relate to their boss, Joe.  ("Never look down. Always look Joe in the eye.")  The youngster is a quick learner and even though Joe is not normally easily impressed, he does take Gary under his muscle-bound wing.

G-Daawg is not the only bad guy in the story.  Relatively early on, a scar-faced derelict named Willie-Russell (Ronnie Gene Blevins), seeking revenge for an earlier bar fight, ambushes Joe with a rifle shot to the shoulder.  Soon thereafter, Willie-Russell also has a scuffle with young Gary, who has spotted the would-be assassin throwing his rifle from a bridge into the creek below.  Nearly killing Joe isn't enough for the crazed Willie-Russell; his ugly mug reappears at the most inopportune times, causing Joe to defend himself.

Joe isn't interested in prying into Gary's private life, but the more time they spend together on the job, the more it becomes apparent to Joe that the boy's living conditions may be more than he can handle alone.  The point is driven home when G-Daawg comes to work on Joe's crew for a day.  The in-your-face verbal squabble between G-Daawg and the crew's foreman is one of the highlights of the movie.  The easy route for Joe would be to let things play out and have Gary fight his own battles.  But Joe is the kind of guy who couldn't live with himself if he took that path.  He becomes a father figure to the teenager who so desperately needs one.

The story is marred to some extent by periodically poor script writing and editing.  Two example come to mind.  When one of Joe's female friends, Connie (Adriene Mishler), calls on Joe at his house, she brings along another woman.  But even though Connie stays throughout the day and night, the only time we see the other woman is the three or four seconds when she first accompanies Connie into Joe's house.  Another example is the one-time brief mentioning that Joe has a grandchild.  The child is never seen or referred to again, nor is the child's grandmother or parents.  There is a bizarre scene in the last reel when Joe has stopped at a red light.  He makes eye contact with a woman who is a passenger in the car which has pulled up next to Joe's.  The light turns green, and the cars go their separate ways. Was the woman someone Joe knew, perhaps the "missing" grandmother?  Nothing regarding the child or the mystery woman at the red light pertains to any other part of the story.  In both instances what we have is total superfluousness.

In an odd twist of real world fate, the man who plays G-Daawg, Gary Poulter, was not a professional actor. Rather, he was a homeless man plucked from the streets of Austin by the film's casting director.  This peculiar method was occasionally employed by director David Gordon Green, on the theory that such a person would lend authenticity to the character.  Sadly, Poulter died a few months after filming.  The movie is dedicated to him.