Is it too early to declare that Branded is the worst film of 2012?
Probably. After all, there’s still 3 more months left in October and who knows what could happen. I’m still holding out hope that Zero Dark Thirty will be just as bad as I’m expecting it to be and I recently realized that I find the trailer for The Sessions to be kind of annoying. There’s still a slight chance that I’ll see a film worse than Branded before 2013.
However, I do think that it’s safe to say that Branded is the worst film of 2012 so far.
At the very least, Branded deserves the award for 2012’s most deceptive trailer.
On the basis of the trailer, you would be perfectly justified in expecting Branded to be a rip-off of John Carpenter’s classic They Live. You would be justified in expecting that the film would be a thriller, involving aliens using advertising to control people’s minds.
What you would not expect is that Branded would turn out to be an overlong, extremely preachy and didactic film about a Russian advertising guru who, after producing an ill-fated reality show, spends 6 years living as a shepherd until he happens to ritualistically sacrifice a red cow and is therefore inspired to lead an advertising war against fast food companies. You wouldn’t expect the film to be such a confused mess that, while watching it, you actually find yourself standing up to leave the theater because you’ve mistakenly assumed that the film is over (as I did several times). You also probably wouldn’t expect that the entire film would be narrated by yet another cow, this one floating around in the night sky and sending down lightning bolts to both enlighten and destroy various advertising gurus.
All of that happens and more! And you know what? As interesting as it may appear to be in writing, it’s all unbelievably dull when watched on-screen. The Russian advertising genius is played by Ed Stoppard and his American girlfriend is played by Leelee Sobieski and, as a couple, they have absolutely zero chemistry. You never believe their relationship and, as such, it’s difficult to understand why Sobieski’s character is so determined to make things work with a guy who appears to be insane. Sobieski’s father is played by Jeffrey Tambor. Whereas everyone else in the film underplays to the point that they sometimes appear to be sleepwalking, Tambor overplays every scene, as if he thought he was appearing in an episode of Arrested Development instead of this movie. In the end, the best performance in the film comes from the talking cow in the sky, even if she seems awfully proud for a character who spends the entire movie spouting banal clichés.
(Seriously, did you know that advertising is a form of manipulation? Well, you do now! Thanks, Space Cow!)
For no particular reason, Max Von Sydow is in the film as well. His role is really just a cameo and the entire time he’s on-screen, he’s got a small smile on his lips as if he’s saying, “Did you really pay money to watch this crap?”
In its defense, there is one — and only one — impressive scene in Branded but you can see that scene in the trailer for free.
There might be a worse film than Branded released this year.
Nearly every film fan that I know is excited about the fact that the trailer for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is going to be available for viewing today. Everyone, that is, but me. To me, Lincoln sounds like yet another big-budget, self-conscious prestige film that was primarily made to win awards (and considering just how weak this year has been so far, it may very well do that). Lincoln sounds like a film that people will respect but never actually enjoy.
Add to that, this is an election year and I know I’m not looking forward to having to listen to all the toadsuckers comparing their particular candidate to Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln. Seriously, it’s going to get tedious.
(That said, I seriously hope that I’m wrong because I’m a lover of both film and history. It’s not the film’s subject matter that concerns me as much as it’s the deafening hype that surrounds the film and demands that I love it before I even see it.)
As soon as the trailer for Lincoln is available on YouTube, either myself or another Shattered Lens will undoubtedly share it on this site. For now, however, I’m going to share another recently released trailer for another film about politics.
If Atlas Shrugged, Part 2 is anything like the first film in the trilogy, it’ll be the type of trashy, low-budget fun that always manages to annoy the usual gang of complacent critical elitists. If nothing else, it should be interesting to see just how overwrought the reaction (both pro and con) will be to this particular film.
How, you may be asking, did I come to see The Clones, an extremely obscure and low-budget science fiction thriller from 1973?
It all started when I first saw the trailer for the film on 42nd Street Forever, a compilation of old school grindhouse trailers. For whatever reasons, the trailer for The Clones fascinated me. Whether it was the extremely dry narration or the fact that the trailer actually ended with a quote from a then-member of the U.S. Senate, I felt that The Clones was a film that I, as a student of film and history, simply had to see.
How obscure is this film? It’s so obscure that The Clones has never even been released on DVD. In order to see the film, I had to go on Amazon and order a used VHS copy from a some guy in Indiana. When it arrived in the mail, the first thing I noticed was the big “Property of the St. Augusta Public Library” that was stamped on the back of the worn video box.
The fact that my copy of The Clones had obviously seen better days actually added a lot to the viewing experience. Much as true grindhouse fans treasure every scratch and auditory pop whenever they watch a film like Fight For Your Life or Last House on Dead End Street, I found myself oddly proud that my copy of The Clones had obviously survived so much just so that it could eventually end up as a part of my video library.
As for the film itself, The Clones is one of those wonderful low-budget films that deserve to be rediscovered. Dr. Gerald Appleby (well-played by an actor named Michael Greene) is a nuclear scientist who discovers that he’s been cloned and that the clone has essentially been out living his life whenever the original Appleby has been at work. Though it’s hinted that he’s being set up by foreign spies, the reason for Appleby’s cloning remains obscure throughout the entire film. Whether this narrative obscurity is intentional or not, it actually serves the film well as it helps to transform Appleby into almost a Kafkaesque figure.
When Appleby attempts to reveal to the proper authorities that he’s been cloned, he finds himself accused of being an imposter and is forced to literally run for his life. The majority of the film deals with Appleby being chased across the California desert by not only the mad scientist who cloned him (a wonderfully demented Stanley Adams) but also by two ruthless federal agents. The two federal agents are played by Otis Young and Gregory Sierra, two character actors who appeared in several films during the 70s. Sierra and Young are a lot of fun to watch in this film and it’s hard not to like them, even if they technically are villains. They both just seem to be having so much fun trying to kill our hero.
From what little information that I’ve been able to gather about this film’s production, it appears that The Clones was one of the first motion pictures to attempt to take advantage of the paranoia that most people feel over the prospect of humans being cloned. When seen today, the film’s story is a bit predictable because, to be honest, there’s really only so much when you can do with cloning as a plot device. However, The Clones remains an oddly effective film. The low budget (and lack of special effects) actually contributes to the film’s success. Without the crutch of spectacle, The Clones is forced to pay attention to things like characterization. How’s that for a concept?
The film eventually climaxes with a genuinely exciting shoot out in a deserted amusement park and then it all ends, in typical 70s fashion, in a climax that manages to be both fun and depressing at the same time.
The Clones is not necessarily an easy film to see but it’s well worth the effort.
Last night, I turned over to the SyFy network and I watched a little film called 2-Headed Shark Attack.
Why Was I Watching It?
I blame twitter. Every Saturday, at 8:00 pm, a group of brave and witty film fans log onto twitter and spend the next two hours deconstructing whatever movie might happen to be playing on the SyFy network that night. Last night, that film was 2-Headed Shark Attack.
Also, how often do you get to see a shark with two heads? I saw a lamb with two heads once and that was pretty disturbing but a shark with two heads? Seriously, there was simply no excuse for not watching.
(Speaking for myself, I couldn’t handle having two heads, just because I suspect the other head would be an attention whore.)
What Was It About?
For some reason, there’s a bunch of incredibly stupid college students on a boat that’s floating out in the middle of nowhere. Apparently, they’re taking part in a “semester at sea” program though, as I watched the film, I came to suspect that they had actually been kidnapped by pirates claiming to be professors and they were unknowingly being delivered to a white slavery ring in Aruba.
Anyway, the head professor (or pirate) is Prof. Babish (former Bachelor Charlie O’Connell) and when the boat starts to sink, largely because of his own stupidity, he decides to take all of his students to a nearby atoll. There, they can all hang out and deliver terrible dialogue while the ship’s hull is repaired and the professor’s wife (Carmen Electra) works on her tan.
The only problem is that the atoll is in the process of sinking and there’s a shark with two heads prowling the waters…
What Worked?
Like most Asylum films, 2-Headed Shark Attack is a film that was made to be watched with friends. If you’re taking the film seriously, you’re missing the point. This is one of those films that invites you to sit back and laugh along with it.
The two-headed shark was the best actor in the film and it was easy to root for him.
Charlie O’Connell has a scene where he gets what appears to be a minor scratch on his leg and he responds by going, “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow…” for about ten minutes straight. It simply has to be seen to be believed.
What Did Not Work?
The film’s heroine was played by Brooke Hogan and wow. Whether it was because of the sleep-inducing way she delivered her lines or the fact that her character claimed that she could repair the boat because, “My dad was a welder,” I have to say that I have never so wanted to see one person get devoured by a two-headed shark.
Initially, those of us on twitter were really excited because we thought that one of the characters was named Tequila. However, it soon became obvious that we had all misheard and his name was actually Dikilla. Don’t get me wrong, Dikilla is a pretty good name but, after we had all had so much fun with the idea of him being named Tequila, it was hard not to be disappointed to discover that we were wrong.
“OH MY GOD! Just like me!’ Moment
Though she was roundly despised by just about everyone on twitter, I have to admit that I very much related to the character who became known as “the blue eyeshadow girl.” She was the girl who continually came up with the silliest solutions to the group’s predicament. She also had a gun for most of the film but, during the final minutes, revealed that she had absolutely no idea how to use it when she fired point-blank at the two-headed shark and, somehow, managed to miss every time. Even as I made fun of her on twitter, I silently thought to myself, “That would so be me if I had ever signed up for a semester at sea.”
(This is not a political post but if it was, it would solely reflect my opinion and not necessarily the opinion of anyone else who writes for this site.)
The big news tonight seems to be that former President Bill Clinton is giving a speech at the Democratic National Convention. After being told by several people on twitter that Clinton is “one of the greatest speakers of all time,” I listened to a few minutes of “America’s greatest politician” and you know what?
I still prefer Clint Eastwood.
That’s not meant to be an endorsement of any political position that has or has not been advocated by Clint Eastwood over the past few weeks. This is not a political statement as much as it’s just an acknowledgement of the fact that Presidents give speeches but Clint Eastwood gets results.
And that leads me to tonight’s scene that I love. From the classic 1971 crime film Dirty Harry, here’s the famous scene that explains why so many people love Clint Eastwood in the first place.
“I wanted you to save me.” — Paul Giamatti in Cosmopolis
It’ll probably take the rest of the world a few years to realize this but David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis is not only a good film but occasionally, it’s even a great film. What it is not is an easy film. Instead, this film is a throwback to the such Cronenberg films as Videodrome and eXistenZ, films that served to not only challenge the audience’s expectations but to occasionally attack them as well.
Plotwise, Cosmopolis is a day in the life of a 28 year-old billionaire named Eric Packer (played by Robert Pattinson, who gives an excellent performance that hints at the neurosis that boils underneath surface ennui). Packer wants to get a haircut so he spends nearly the entire day sitting in the back of his stretch limo, being driven through an increasingly violent and disturbing New York. Rarely leaving the safety of his limo, Packer has several chance meetings with his wife, who refuses to have sex with him, and picks up several other women who are willing to have sex with him. He also finds the time to have a prostate exam and discuss (and discuss) the meaning of life with several of his cronies, all of whom seem to pop up in the back of his limousine without warning and who also seem to vanish once Packer tires of listening to them. Along the way, Packer finds both himself and his limousine being targeted for destruction but he never changes his plans or his direction. After all, he needs a haircut…
Many reviewers are treating Cosmopolis, with its portrayal of a man who has too much money and not enough humanity, as if it’s some sort of Occupy manifesto and, indeed, there are several scenes where Cosmpolis does seem to serve as a mouthpiece for the anti-capitalist Occupy ideology. There are also several scenes where Cosmopolis plays as a very deliberate modern-day version of Jean-Luc Godard’s Marxist-themed, pro-revolution Weekend. However, to simply call Cosmopolis a pro-Occupy film is to offer up an interpretation that’s a bit too simplistic. After all, when the Cosmopolis version of the Occupy protestors do make an appearance, they’re either rioting in the streets (and getting nothing more than a bemused smirk from Packer) or else they’re being represented in the form of a shambling and somewhat pathetically bitter character played by Paul Giamatti. When Giamatti accuses Packer of hurting other people with his lifestyle, Packer confidently replies, “Don’t pretend that you care about other people,” and it’s rather obvious that, in the troubled world of Cosmopolis, both the excesses of the 1% and the Occupy movement spring from the same poisoned well of narcissism and anger. In Cosmopolis, neither of the competing ideologies are presented as being a solutions but instead, both are seen as signs that the world is beyond saving.
Ultimately, Cosmopolis is a return to themes that should be familiar to anyone who is familiar with Cronenberg’s work. Like many Cronenberg protaganists, Eric Packer is a neurotic man who has attempted to make himself invulnerable to a messy and imperfect world and, in the process, he has surrendered his humanity. While the world outside collapses, Packer is sealed off in his stretch limo. Over the course of the day, it becomes increasingly obvious that he stays in the limo because that limousine is an environment that he can control. It also becomes apparent that the sterility of his perfect limo has left his incapable of relating to or even understanding the world outside. It’s only as the film progresses and Packer continually finds himself forced to exit the limousine that his true nature starts to come to the surface. It’s only when, at the end of the film, Packer finds himself permanently separated from his limousine that the film can reach its apocalyptic ending.
Ever since it appeared at Cannes, Cosmopolis has been getting a lot of mixed reviews and it’ll probably never be the type of film that is embraced by the masses. It’s too cold and clinical to be beloved by many filmgoers.
Well, that’s their loss.
In a year that’s been dominated by bland and safe movies, Cosmopolis is a film that dares to challenge the audience. It’s a film that dares to say that all is not right with the world and that there might not be any easy or crowd-pleasing solutions.
Love it or hate it, we need (and deserve) films like Cosmopolis.
For most of 2012, I was excited about seeing one film and that film was Lawless. Why was I so excited about seeing Lawless? Well, first off, I had spent most of the year being bombarded by the film’s genuinely exciting trailer. Seriously, that trailer was more entertaining than 80% of the film that I’ve seen this year. Judging from the trailer, the film was a period piece that took place during one of my favorite decades, the 1920s. The film dealt with bootleggers and I’m proud to say that there’s a few of those on my family tree. The trailer also featured Gary Oldman firing a tommy gun, Jessica Chastain dancing, Guy Pearce acting odd, and Tom Hardy being all tough and Tom Hardy-like.
When I watched that trailer, it didn’t matter that the film starred Shia LeBouf (who has always struck me as being a bit of a whiney actor). It didn’t matter that director John Hillcoat previously wasted good material with his adaptation of The Road. It didn’t even matter that the film was greeted with indifference at Cannes. “Oh,” I told myself, “that’s just the French critics being reflexively anti-American. Lawless has Truffaut written all over it…”
The only thing that tempered my enthusiasm for Lawless was when the first of the 30-second commercials started to appear on television. As opposed to the exciting trailer, these commercials made the film seem rather average and they now put less emphasis on the film’s stylistic excesses and more on the fact that the film was apparently “based on a true story.” The tone of the television spots was so different from that of the theatrical trailer that it was hard not to conclude that the PR geniuses at the Weinstein Company weren’t sure how to sell the film. I found myself wondering if Lawless would be as confused as its ad campaign.
Last Friday, I finally saw Lawless and judged for myself.
Lawless tells the story of the three Bondurant brothers. In the 1920s, these brothers are succesful bootleggers who work out of rural Virginia and who maintain a peaceful coexistence with local law enforcement through a steady supply of bribes. The oldest brother is a taciturn World War I veteran named Forrest (played by Tom Hardy.) The youngest brother is Jack (Shia LeBouf), who idolizes violent gangsters like Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman). The middle brother is Howard (Jason Clarke). Howard spends most of the movie yelling.
Things are peaceful for the Bondurant brothers until, one day, a corrupt and oddly fastidious prohibition agent named Rakes (Guy Pearce) shows up and demands a cut of whatever profit the brothers make from their bootlegging. Forrest refuses and soon Rakes and the Bondurants are engaged in a very violent and bloody war.
That war, however, doesn’t stop Jack from pursuing a relationship with a rebellious preacher’s daughter (played by Mia Wasikowska). Meanwhile, Forrest hires a new waitress to work at the family bar. Maggie (Jessica Chastain) is a former dancer from Chicago and soon, she and Forrest are cautiously pursuing their own relationship. As for Howard, he yells a lot.
Lawless is an odd film. The actors are all well-cast and Shia LeBouf probably gives his first genuinely good performance here. The film’s violent action sequences are well-choreographed and one could even argue that, in the character of Rakes, the film is drawing a very relevent parallel to America’s own modern-day war on drugs. And yet, as I watched the film, I felt oddly detached from the action onscreen and the Bondurants never came to life for me as individual characters that were worth rooting for. I think the ultimate problem with Lawless is the same problem that Hillcoat ran into with The Road. Lawless is a film full of beautiful visuals and striking sequences but none of it seems to naturally flow together. As a result, the film is visually striking but narratively weak.
As a result, Lawless is ultimately a case of the triumph of style over substance. How you react to the film will probably depend on how much importance you put into either one of those two elements. If you’re willing to accept the film simply as a collection of striking visuals (as I was), you’ll find a lot to enjoy in Lawless but if you’re looking for something deeper, you’ll probably be disappointed.
You’re also going to be disappointed if you go to Lawless expecting to see a Gary Oldman film because Oldman is only in about four minutes of the film, his best scene is in the trailer, and his character lacks that touch of eccentric charisma that Oldman typically brings to his villains. Instead, it falls to Guy Pearce to be eccentric and evil and he does a great job. Sporting an accent as odd as his haircut, Pearce brings a brilliantly perverse jolt to even the simplest of line readings. Lawless is at its best when its content to just let Guy Pearce play at being Gary Oldman.
Since it opened last Friday, the new PG-13 horror film The Apparition hasn’t been getting much love from either critics or audiences. When last I checked, the film had a 3% approval rating over at Rotten Tomatoes and it had gotten exactly one positive review. However, if I’ve made one thing very clear in my reviews here on the Shattered Lens, it’s that I hate the bandwagon mentality that runs rampant throughout the online film community. So, instead of immediately focusing on The Apparition’s (many) faults, I’m going to start this review by pointing out a few positive things about this film.
The Apparition is only 82 minutes long and is shorter than both Avatar and David Fincher’s rip-off of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
The Apparation is not in 3-D.
The Apparition is not a found footage film. There’s no attempt made to try to insult your intelligence by convincing you that you’re watching something that actually happened 20 years ago.
Though an adorable (if intrusive) dog dies early on, no cats are harmed during the course of this movie.
The film’s final 10 minutes are actually rather effective and oddly disturbing. Solely on the basis of the film’s final scenes, I would probably see the next movie that Todd Lincoln directs.
Finally, if you’re like me and you enjoy making out at the movies, The Apparition is the perfect film to see. First off, it’s a horror movie and, even though nothing scary actually happens for the majority of the film, you can always fake being scared as an excuse to grab your man. (And, as we all know, sometimes you just have to fake it…) Secondly, chances are that if you two do see The Apparition, you’ll pretty much have the entire theater to yourself. Third, since nothing really happens for the most of the movie, you won’t have to worry about missing anything important while you two are having your fun.
As for the film itself, it tells a story that should be familiar to anyone who has seen Paranormal Activity or Insidious.
Kelly (Ashley Greene) and her boyfriend Ben (Sebastian Stan) are taking care of a house located in a nearly deserted subdivision. We spend the first half of the movie getting to know Kelly and Ben. We follow them as they debate what to have for lunch, as they shop at Costco, and as they play video games. We quickly discover that, together, Kelly and Ben are perhaps the most boring couple ever. Seriously, I have had nightmares about befriending a couple like Kelly and Ben and then having to attend a couples party at their house where all the other couples play Pictionary and want to tell you all the details about the last time they went snowboarding at Telluride.
Of course, a huge part of the problem with Ben and Kelly, as a couple, is that the actors playing them have next to no chemistry. Watching Greene and Stan on-screen, you have a hard time believing that they’ve even known each other for five minutes, let alone that they’re enough in love that they would stay together even after it becomes apparent that there’s some sort of otherworldly demon chasing after Ben as the result of a séance that he attended 3 years ago.
One of the frustrating things about The Apparition is that, occasionally, you can see hints of the movie that it could have been if the script had been a little bit sharper and if the performances were a little less flat. Visually, Lincoln does a good job of highlighting the isolation of the house and, even if he didn’t quite succeed, I can appreciate what he was attempting with the slow build up. But this is one of those films where every effective moment is immediately answered by two moments that don’t work. This is a film that’s smart enough to have Kelly demand to leave the haunted house, just to then reveal that leaving means camping out in a tent that’s been set up in the back yard.
(Even worse, the film later establishes that there’s actually a pretty nice motel within driving distance of the house. You really do have to wonder why Kelly — who was so terrified that she literally ran out of the house in her underwear — would feel safer just because she’s now staying in a tent that’s about two feet away from the demon that’s trying to kill her. Then again, I hate camping so maybe it’s something that I’m just not capable of understanding.)
Finally, if you’re like me and you’re still suffering withdrawal pains from the end of the Harry Potter films, you might want to see this film just for the chance to see Tom Fenton playing the role of Ben’s friend Patrick. Unfortunately, Fenton’s only in about ten minutes of the film and Patrick, sad to say, is no Draco.
Last night, as morning slowly approached, I curled up on the couch in my comfy Hello Kitty bathrobe and turned the TV over to the Retro Channel, where I watched a film from 1983. The name of that film? Eddie Macon’s Run.
Why Was I Watching It?
The short answer is insomnia. The long answer is that, when I checked the guide to see what was on TV at 3 in the morning, Eddie Macon’s Run was the only film listed that I had never heard of before. Since my life’s goal is to see every single film ever made, I knew I would have to watch this mysterious Eddie Macon’s Run at some point so I figured, “Why not tonight?”
What Was It About?
Eddie Macon’s running! Okay, well, there’s actually a little more to it than that…
Eddie (played by John Schneider, who has appeared in countless SyFy films) is a nice, blue-collar guy who finds himself wrongly imprisoned in Hunstville, Texas. During the prison rodeo, Eddie manages to escape and soon, he’s running down to Mexico where his wife and son are waiting. Kirk Douglas plays the cop who chases Eddie across Texas. Whenever Douglas shows up on screen, we hear a saxophone playing on the soundtrack. Scenes of Eddie thinking about his family are accompanied by country songs that, the credits reveal, were sung by John Schneider. Yes, it’s that type of film.
What Worked?
To be honest, the main thing that worked for me about this film is that it was shot on location in rural South Texas. That’s the same part of Texas that my mom grew up in and whenever I would bug her to tell me a story about when she was “my age,” the stories always took place in South Texas and I always enjoy seeing it in films (even if that film, as in the case of this one, goes out of its way to make South Texas seem like the 9th circle of Hell).
John Schneider, all hot and sexy here, gave a surprisingly good performance.
Kirk Douglas, meanwhile, didn’t really give that good of a performance but my God, that man could grimace with the best of them.
A kind of youngish John Goodman shows up for about 2 minutes and the whole process of going, “Oh my God, is that John Goodman!? I think that is John Goodman!” provided a nice break from the film’s general monotony.
What Did Not Work?
This is one of those films that, though it was filmed in Texas, was obviously made by Yankees. As such, the movie is full of actors who were obviously imported from up north and who are painful to listen to as they attempt to recreate the accents of South Texas.
The film, itself, moved about as slowly as the sun going down over the flat plains in North Texas. Seriously — for a film that featured nonstop running and Kirk Douglas finding about a hundred different ways to clench his jaw, Eddie Macon’s Run sure was boring. There’s a scene where Eddie is menaced by two ranchers and I swear to God, it seemed to last for a few hours.
It also quickly became apparent that the only way for the film’s plot to be believable was for every single character in the film to be a complete idiot.
“Oh My God! Just Like Me!” Moment
Eddie eventually meets the niece of the governor of Texas (played by Lee Purcell) and she agrees to help Eddie run because it’s “just a slow Wednesday.” That’s totally why I would get involved with an escaped fugitive as well.
Lessons Learned
Give me a couch and put me in a Hello Kitty bathrobe and I’ll watch anything.
Killer Joe, the latest film from William Friedkin (who, 40 years ago, won an Oscar for directing The French Connection), is rated NC-17 for “graphic disturbing content involving violence and sexuality, and a scene of brutality.” That, more than anything, was why I wanted to see Killer Joe. I wanted to see just how extreme a film starring Matthew McConaughey could possibly be. However, I also knew that the NC-17 rating would mean that I would have to show my ID before being allowed to have my mind corrupted. See, I might be 26 years old but most people seem to assume that I’m 17. That is, until I speak. At that point, they usually realize that they’ve guessed incorrectly and decide that I’m actually 15.
Sure enough, when me and my BFF Evelyn bought our tickets to see Killer Joe earlier this week, I was asked to show my ID. Smiling my sweetest smile, I held up my driver’s license. I was expecting that the ticker seller would just glance at the ID and then say, “Thank you,” but instead, he literally appeared to be studying my picture. His eyes shifted from the license to me and back to the license. I was starting to get nervous because, after all, it’s not like I was trying to get through airport security. I just wanted to see a forbidden movie.
Behind me, I heard Evelyn say, “That looks like a fake to me.”
“Ha ha,” I cleverly replied.
Evelyn responded with, “I don’t trust her. Maybe you guys should strip search her…”
Finally, the ticket seller looked away from my driver’s license and, as he handed me my ticket, he told us that the theater’s management had instructed him to make sure that we understood that we were about to see an explicitly violent film. He also told us that there were free donuts available at the concession stand. That was nice of him.
So, after all that, I finally got to see the forbidden film Killer Joe and you know what? Killer Joe earns its NC-17 rating, not so much because it’s any more exploitive than any other mainstream film released this year but because it’s actually honest about being an exploitation film. Killer Joe may be playing in the arthouses but it’s a grindhouse film and proud of it.
Killer Joe takes place in my hometown of Dallas (though it was filmed in New Orleans) and it features perhaps the sleaziest group of losers that you’ll find on a movie screen this year. Chris (Emile Hirsch) is a drug dealer who lives with his mother and who moves, talks, and thinks with the scrambled energy of a meth addict. His father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) is an affably stupid alcoholic who lives in a trailer park with his second wife, Sharla (Gina Gershon, who gives a ferociously good performance here) and his daughter, 16 year-old Dottie (Juno Temple). Dottie is a spacey girl who is given to sleep walking and who doesn’t appear to be quite all there. Chris is creepily overprotective of her and, though it’s never implicitly stated, it quickly becomes obvious that there’s a rather disturbing subtext to her relationship with both Chris and her father.
Chris has managed to get into debt with some local criminals but he’s got a plan. As he explains to Ansel, his mother has got a sizable life insurance policy and if she dies, the money will go to Dottie. Chris and Ansel hire a hitman to carry out the murder for them. That hitman is Joe (Matthew McConaughey, giving the performance of his career), a demonic charmer who always dresses in black and who has a day job as a homicide detective. When Chris and Ansel explain that they don’t have the money to pay him in advance, Joe agrees to take Dottie as a retainer.
Soon, Joe is living in the trailer park with Dottie, Chris is getting brutally beaten up every time he goes out in the daylight, and the murder doesn’t seem to be any closer to actually happening. When Joe finally does make his move, it all leads to a lot of very brutal violence, a series of betrayals, and a very disturbing scene involving a drumstick from Kentucky Fried Chicken. As I said before, Killer Joe earns that NC-17.
William Friedkin, who has had a rather uneven career, dives right into the film’s sordid atmosphere. The majority of the film takes place in that Hellish trailer park and Friedkin perfectly captures the feeling of a society made up of people who are trapped by their own lack of intelligence, imagination, and status. There’s been a lot of films made about white trash but Killer Joe gets it right, creating an all too believable Hell where everyone can afford to buy a pit bull but not a decent suit (or, in the case of Dottie, a bra). When the violence does come, Friedkin doesn’t shy away from showing it nor does he try to pretend that violence doesn’t have consequences. When people get hurt in Killer Joe, they stay hurt.
Matthew McConaughey is a wonder as Killer Joe. Whereas many actors would tend to go overboard with such a psychotic character (and you’d be justified in expecting McConaughey to go overboard as well), McConaughey is actually rather restrained for most of the film. The power of his performance comes from the fact that, while everyone else is going crazy, McConaughey is subdued and steady. It’s only when he speaks to Dottie that we get a few clues of just what exactly it is that lurks beneath Killer Joe’s coolly professional manner. It’s only towards the end of the film that McConaughey allows his performance to get a bit more showy but, by that point, the entire film has gone to such an extreme that Joe still seems almost sensible.
Killer Joe, however, is not a perfect film. Though the film is set in North Texas (and, in fact, the Texas-setting is pretty important to the film’s overall plot), it was filmed in Louisiana. Speaking as someone who has lived in both of those fine states, trust me when I say that, visually, there’s a huge visual difference between Texas and Louisiana. (Evelyn and I shared a laugh when we spotted Palm Trees in the film’s version of Dallas.)
While the clumsy use of Louisiana as a stand-in for Texas probably won’t be noticeable to anyone outside of the Southwest, a far more noticeable problem with Killer Joe is that the film is based on a stage play and, despite some efforts to open up the action, the film still basically feels rather stagey. This is the type of movie where people tend to deliver semi-poetic monologues about their childhood at the drop of a (cowboy) hat. To a certain extent, the staginess made it easier to handle the film’s violence (and perhaps that was Friedkin’s intention) but, at other times, it just caused the action to drag.
Ultimately, Killer Joe is a film that I would recommend with reservations. It’s definitely not for everyone and I don’t know that it’s a film that I’ll ever want to sit through again (seriously, I’ll be surprised if I ever manage to eat another drumstick) but it is a movie worth seeing. If nothing else, it’s the closest were going to get to a true grindhouse film this year.
