KILLER JOE

Often in Noir, we meet characters with a somewhat skewed moral compass who commit one terrible, immoral act, far beyond the pale of what any of us would normally consider. The characters in William Friedkin's Killer Joe start there and graduate to progressively greater moral compromises.

Take Chris (Emile Hirsh) for example.  Chris is one of those perpetually troubled noir protagonists. He’s a screw-up drug dealer in debt to people who have run out of patience. It just so happens that his no good mother has a fifty thousand dollar life insurance policy. Let he who is without sin, etc, etc…. Chris enlists his father (a scene stealing Thomas Haden Church) to help hire Killer Joe (Matthew McConaughey), a Dallas Detective who moonlights as a murderer for hire. Since they’re broke and Joe likes to be paid in advance, Joe decides to take a retainer, Chris’s younger, virginal, mentally ill sister Dottie (Juno Temple).

Most films are content to have only one Faustian deal, Killer Joe has two. For those keeping count, Chris has Joe  "courting" his sister as a down-payment on killing his mother. No one in the film has a problem with the 'mother' part, but Chris grows more and more uncomfortable about the 'sister' part. He tries to call it off, but things spiral out of control and Joe tightens his grip on the family, and the whole thing climaxes in a darkly comic chicken dinner destined for bizarro infamy.

The key word there is 'comic.' The advertising campaign for this film seems intent on hiding the fact that the film is just as much a parody of Noir as it is a Noir itself. Balancing these contradicting tones would derail a lesser director but Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) and screenwriter Tracy Letts (adapting his own play) bounce between the nuances with the deftness of a depraved Elmore Lenard.

The cast does a good job with very tough material. Hirsh is grounded enough to sell the ‘let’s kill mama’ plan as almost reasonable. McConaughey channels a sort of Robert Mitchum coldness and intensity. His scenes with Juno Temple are of particular interest as we watch two very different forms of madness co-existing in the same space. She's a Femme Fatale, but not in any conventional sense. Also, while no one in the cast is undeserving of nomination, Gina Gershon probably wins the Good Trooper Award as Haydon Church’s new wife.

The film is rated NC-17 and with good reason. It's designed to provoke and shock. There are a lot of good laughs in this movie, but if you wanted to take a bath afterwords, I wouldn’t blame you.

Grade: A-