Film review: Joe
Coming off the back of recent scenery-gnawing turns in multiplex landfill like ‘Stolen’, ‘Trespass’ and ‘Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance’, Cage’s new movie ‘Joe’ is the most pleasant surprise he’s delivered since Herzog’s sublime ‘Bad Lieutenant’.
He plays the eponymous self-contained (not often a phrase associated with Cage) ex-con who befriends a hard-working boy whose deadbeat father, Wade, seems set on destroying himself and his family.
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Hide AdIt’s all set in backwater America, where the cops and the robbers sometimes appear interchangeable and no law is ever absolute. There’s no doubt that Joe is a criminal but, as pragmatism gives way to anger, he’s clearly the lesser of a multitude of evils.
The greatest of these is Wade, who reaches often desperate levels of depravity. It’s a movie-stealing performance by Gary Poulter, whose alcohol-related death shortly after the film wrapped adds a further level of bleakness.