Killer Joe
Tags: comedy, neo noir, cruelty, murder, violence, storytelling

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with drug dealer Chris Smith arriving at a trailer on a late rainy night. He pounds on the door until Sharla, his step mom, answers. Chris is there to see his father Ansel. Sharla and Chris argue and there is a small physical confrontation. Then Ansel and Chris get into it. Dottie, Chris' young sister, listens to the commotion from her bedroom.Sooner or later, Chris and Ansel leave the trailer and go to the strip club. Chris tells Ansel that he owes money to some people who will kill him if he doesn't pay. He talks about his mom, Adele, who has a fifty thousand dollar life insurance policy. Chris then tells Ansel about a police detective named Joe Cooper, who moonlights as a hitman. In the event of Adele's death, all the money would go to Dottie. Ansel needs some convincing, so the two get to talking about Adele and how badly she treats everyone around her, including her new boyfriend Rex. Ansel agrees.Joe Cooper arrives at the trailer one morning to meet Chris. Instead, he meets Dottie and the two make small talk. Joe tells a story about a man who lit his genitals on fire to teach his girlfriend a lesson about cheating on him. Dottie tells a story about how her mom Adele tried to kill her once when she was a baby. The phone rings: it's Chris for Joe. Chris tells Joe to meet him at an abandoned building. Joe tells Chris not to change plans on him again.Joe, with the assistance of Dottie, reaches the building where Chris and Ansel are. Inside this building, Joe instructs Chris and Ansel on his rules for if he was to kill Adele for them. Joe names his price: twenty-five thousand dollars in advance. Chris says he can't give Joe the money prior to the murder but he can give him a cut of the life insurance. Joe repeats: "No exceptions."Joe is about to leave when notices Dottie outside happily spinning around in front of a church. Joe then tells Chris that they never discussed the possibility of a retainer. Then he leaves. Ansel doesn't understand and Chris has to spell it out for him: Joe wants Dottie until he can be paid.The movie shifts to Sharla, who works at a run down pizza parlor. She is talking on the phone with an unknown man. She holds in her hand naked pictures of this man and jokes that his face can't be seen in them. Dottie appears behind her and asks for some money for dinner, Sharla pretends the person the phone was one of her old friends. She hangs up and goes to sit with Dottie. Sharla tells her that there will be a guest for dinner that night. Dottie knows its Joe. Ansel arrives and he tells Dottie he's gonna give her some money so she can buy something nice to wear. Then, he and Sharla talk privately. Sharla's mad at Ansel because he as yet to tell Dottie that she and Joe will be the only ones at the trailer.That night, when Dottie finds out the situation, she acts very strange and locks herself in her room. Joe arrives and doesn't get angry. He tells her that she doesn't have to come out of her room if she doesn't want to. After Joe tells another story, Dottie comes out of her room and the two have dinner. Dottie says that she had a dress she was gonna wear, but she decided against it. Joe said he would've loved to see it. At a certain point in the evening, Joe asked Dottie to put on the dress in front of him. Soon after that, the two have sex. Chris, from outside, sees the lights in the trailer go out.In another part of town, the same night, a yellow sports car is parked at a cheap motel. A man in a cowboy hat knocks on the door to one of the rooms. Sharla answers and lets the man in.Shift to the daytime. Chris is betting on some horses for money. He loses. As he walks outside, two big men stand in front of him. He starts to run away but he doesn't get very far and the two big men, on motorcycles, run him down. A big truck pulls up and Digger Soames gets out. This is the man Chris owes money to. Digger tells Chris that he better pay him soon. Digger leaves and the two big men beat Chris to a pulp.Chris has a conversation with Joe the next day. He doesn't want Joe around Dottie anymore. Joe says all Chris has to do is say the word and he will leave right now. Chris still wants his mom dead.That night, at the police station, Killer Joe gets ready. He grabs his gun, his gloves, his hat and walks outside. Chris is waiting for him and tells him he has second thoughts about going through with the murder. Joe tells Chris to get in his car.The two drive along ways to a closed restaurant. Joe goes to the trunk of his car and opens it. Chris looks inside... Adele's body is lying there. Joe has already killed her. Chris helps Joe dispose of the body in a way that makes it look like an accident.Days pass. Ansel and Sharla go to collect the insurance money while Dottie and Chris wait in the restaurant. When Sharla returns to the restaurant, she and Ansel are extremely mad.The family walks down the street. Ansel pushes Chris up against the wall and tells him that Dottie is not the beneficiary of the $50,000. Rex, Adele's boyfriend is the beneficiary. It is here where it is revealed that Rex is not only the one that told Chris about the life insurance, but is also the one who told Chris about Killer Joe. Chris, having nothing to pay either Digger or Killer Joe, decides to flee the country. He wants Dottie to go with him to Peru, but she says she wants to see Joe first.The yellow sports car drives down the street. It is pulled over by Killer Joe's police car. The driver of the sports car gets out. Here, it is revealed that the man in the cowboy hat (from the motel) is Rex.That night, Sharla and Ansel return to the trailer with some KFC. Joe is there and asks to have a chicken leg. Joe approaches Sharla and asks her about Rex. She says she doesn't really know him. Joe asks if she was gonna get a cut of the money. Ansel says he was gonna let her have a cut cause Sharla is his wife. Through some smart interrogation and trickery, Joe gets Sharla to reveal that life insurance was actually worth $100,000. Because Adele's death was ruled an accident, the life insurance doubles. Sharla was the only one who knew that out of the family. Joe then shows Ansel two things: a check made out to Rex for 100 grand, and the naked pictures of Rex that Sharla had on her person.In the most talked about scene of the movie, Joe punches Sharla, breaking her nose. Then he takes the chicken leg from KFC and lowers it in front of his waist. He forces Sharla to suck on the leg like it is his member. As this happens Joe says that since he will not be paid in cash, the retainer, Dottie, belongs to him now. He says he knows Chris is going to come over to attempt to take Dottie with him. Killer Joe states that "If this family allows Chris to leave this trailer tonight, I'll slaughter all of you like pigs."In the film's finale, Chris returns to the trailer. Dottie, Ansel, Sharla, and Joe all wait for him at the dinner table. Chris sits down and everyone eats together for a short while. Then, Joe stands and announces that Dottie has agreed to marry him. Chris is anything but happy. He tells Joe he can't let him have Dottie. Chris tells Dottie to go get her stuff. Joe tells Dottie to stay seated. Chris pulls out a gun and points it at Joe. Sharla grabs a knife from the table and stabs Chris in the shoulder. Joe tackles Chris and the gun slides in front of Dottie.Joe holds Chris in front of the refrigerator and bashes his face in with a can of pumpkin filling. Ansel grabs Chris legs so he can't run away. Sharla bashes a beer bottle of Chris' head. Everyone has taken their eyes off of Dottie, who has finally snapped. She picks up the gun and shoots it all over hell. Joe, Ansel, and Sharla, all go motionless.Dottie fires first at Chris, shooting him in the chest. He falls dead. Then Dottie shoots Ansel in the stomach, he screams in pain as he goes to his knees. Dottie then aims at Joe. Joe looks at her and asks her to put the gun down. She responds, "I'm gonna have a baby." She puts her finger on the trigger again.The final shot of the film is Killer Joe smiling in excitement.

Review: The story revolves around a trailer trash family and their plan to exploit an insurance policy on the husband's ex-wife because the son got wrapped up in a bad drug deal, so they hire Killer Joe to do the job.
They all have such subtle personalities, it seems as though they are playing themselves.As for the plot, it is somewhat standard fare, as the trailer could easily giveaway, however it's how it progresses and pans out, is the most interesting aspect of the film.There are a few scenes which some will find very hard to watch (in fact, during one now-notorious scene, dozens of people left the screening I was at), but if you stick with them, you will be in for a...
Here as Killer Joe he lays on a Faust like menace, delivering his lines with clinically calm precision, yet still there's a glint in his eye, we know a black heart beats there but he can charm a snake out of its basket, a girl out of her underwear...Unflinching direction, bravura performances and neo-noir at its near best, one of the best films of 2012 so far.
These three characters are this movie aptly supported by Gershon's conniving Sharla and Thomas Hayden Church's witless Ansel.Killer Joe has a down and dirty indie feel which is totally right.
William Friedkin's Killer Joe proclaims itself as a "totally twisted, deep-fried Texas, redneck trailer park murder story," but to be fair, I'm not sure that is even an accurate summation.
The film includes some of the most hard-hitting scenes of combat that I've seen in any other film this year, and I'd absolutely love to know just what scene the MPAA was referring to in the first place.The film centers around the family of twentysomething Chris Smith (played fantastically by Emile Hirsch, assuming the type of role he should continue to seek out), a lowlife drug dealer residing in a Texas trailer park, with his dim-witted father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), his annoying step-mother Sharla (Gina Gershon), and mentally disabled sister Dottie (Juno Temple).
Chris proposes the idea to hire "Killer" Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a sleazy cop who also works as an assassin, to kill his mother and receive a cut of the insurance money, with him, Ansel, and Sharla getting a good chunk of the profits.
However, things become incredibly twisted when Killer Joe begins to fall in love with Dottie, and how the whole family begins on an even steeper downward spiral due to a colossal misunderstanding thanks to Chris.Every character in the film is despicable in their own way, either by the shameful atrocities they commit or just because of the fact that their motivation is hopelessly self-centered and shockingly shallow and inept.
The fact that this film confidently branches out so far past the idea of a stage-play to the point of being unrecognizable from its roots is a huge accomplishment all on its own.I close with a forewarning that while I feel that the NC-17 rating Killer Joe received is somewhat questionable, I state with caution that this is a very violent picture, with several sequences of brutality that nearly channel the lines of sadistic depravity.
The film's charm is indescribable and its execution, fearless and zealous, making this one of the most surprising and impressive motion pictures of this year.Starring: Emile Hirsch, Matthew McConaughey, Thomas Haden Church, Gina Gershon, and Juno Temple.
In fact, it's more like a David Cronenberg film than Friedkin.If you've seen movies like The Acid House, or the 1998 Todd Solondz face-punch Happiness and find them amusing through the gaps in your fingers then you'll be sick enough to fully enjoy Killer Joe.Matthew McConaughey plays Joe Cooper, an unorthodox Dallas police detective who is 'hired' by petty drug dealer Emile Hirsch to whack his old lady and thus benefit from an insurance policy with his deadbeat dad (Thomas Haden Church in a wonderful performance) and virginal, oddball sister Dottie (Juno Temple).
Only they cannot raise the money to pay Joe so he agrees to spend some quality time with Dottie until the policy pays off in waiver of his upfront fee.It reminded me a lot of an Oliver Stone film called U-Turn, another Texas-based psycho-sexual murder plot filled with heat-waves and perpetual distrust, but was much more enjoyable.
After being refused money by his father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), Chris comes up with a plot to have his mother murdered, collecting the life insurance money that he believes will pass to his sister Dottie (Juno Temple).
This is Coen Brothers territory, taking place in that sweaty world of the Deep South, full of smoky bars, rusty trailers, cowboy hats, motorbikes and overweight, middle-aged men in vests, a modern-day noir world ripe with possibilities, one that I feel has been slightly wasted here.But if you've ever wondered if a film's climatic scene would ever involved a woman performing fellatio on a chicken drumstick, then here is your answer.
Killer Joe's final frames will undoubtedly divide audiences between those who get director William Friedkin's intentions to take things to Jacobian absurdity, to those who will feel it as a silly contradiction to the film early, more subtle black humour.
His performance is captivating; it creates a pervasive, looming sense of dread and depravity that suggests something very bad is going to happen at any moment.The praise doesn't stop with McConaughey, the whole cast delivers to the best of their ability, it really is an actors' film.
She shows good dramatic range as Dottie, the slightly strange, child-like girl at the centre of the film.William Friedkin has outdone himself with his second collaboration with writer Tracy Letts; he directs the taut, punchy material perfectly.
Killer Joe marks his return to the director's chair and it's one of the few returns I've anticipated the most in recent times along with the return of Walter Hill.Killer Joe was a hell of a gamble for Friedkin for a number of reasons, besides the fact that it was a film he knew the mainstream would absolutely not be interested in.For a start, the movie is white trash Texas AND based on a theatre play.
Emile Hirsch (who I don't like), plays Chris Smith, an annoying, horrid trailer trash drug abusing dead end kid who wants to have his own mother murdered so he can inherit her will.
Not having the money could mean paralysis or death in the near future.Getting his dad and stepmother involved in a plot to have a hit-man murder his mother (also the mother of Dottie, Chris's brain-damaged younger sister who has been wrong ever since their mother tried to smother her, and played to alarming accuracy by Juno Temple).In comes cold and somewhat calmly deranged 'Killer' Joe Cooper, a cop that murders people on the side as a second job.
Sensing everything falling down around him, Killer Joe remains in cop mode and finds himself at the centre of a bigger conspiracy.It's not so much the plot that's different here, it's McConnaughey as Killer Joe. I've not found him in many enjoyable roles since Dazed and Confused or Reign of Fire, but here, he delivers one of the most extremely charismatic yet psychopathic roles I have ever witnessed and this film is disturbing to its very core.The odd thing is that as disturbing as it is, you're either going to switch off out of disgust for what happens or the things your eyes will catch - as Friedkin is not one to hold back or be told he's out of order - and if you keep watching, you may very well laugh and find yourself extremely satisfied with the outcome.Killer Joe is about despicable people and not one of the characters are likable, but saying that, you do often pity Chris's honest but simple and burdened father Ansel (Thomas Hayden Church in possibly his best to date) and Dottie, who can't help but be Dottie, whatever the situation.This could very well have been a Gary Oldman film, were it British, which is also why I appreciate it so much.
Yes it has to be visually appealing but the subject matter of his work is always reliant on performances.So Killer Joe is another adaptation of a play by Tracy Letts and again has to rely on strong characters with convincing effort to make it come to life.
KILLER JOE is a tale set in the deepest, worst parts of the South in a rundown trailer park where Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch) plots to murder his mother when she steals his drugs and leaves him indebted to a murderous local gangster.
If there is one good thing to come out of a vulgar for vulgarities sake film such as "Killer Joe", it is that hopefully this will put an end to the Tracy Letts experiment.
In yet another film from the dreadful collaboration of director William Friedkin (The Exorcist) and playwright Tracy Letts (Bug) "Killer Joe" is a star studded, putrid mess of a film, starring Matthew McConaughey (The Lincoln Lawyer) Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild) Juno Temple (The Dark Knight Rises)Thomas Haden Church (Sideways) and Gina Gershon (Face/Off).
The plot follows a young man (played by Hirsch) who is deep in debt with "some very bad people" and decides, with the help of his father (Church), sister (Temple) and his step-mother (Gershon) to hire a hit-man, by the name of Killer Joe Cooper, to kill his mother so he can collect the insurance money.
Instead audiences are bombarded with mounds of disturbing visuals treated in a flippant manner, editing which is all over the place, nonsensical nudity, numbing violence, acting that is so over-the-top it is uncomfortable to watch and an entire plot that is drowned beneath a dark comedic atmosphere that basically confuses audiences to the point of repulsion (quickly bypassing annoyance).Matthew McConaughey's Performance: Before watching this film, I had heard an interview with McConaughey stating how the first time he read this script he turned it down simply on the basis that he thought it was an all around ugly piece of work.
A final thirty minutes that not only voids anything good about this film (the little that there is) but more importantly may unfortunately be the reason McConaughey will be overlooked come awards season.Final Thought: All you really need to know about "Killer Joe" is that this is yet another Friedkin/Letts collaboration that's sole purpose is to elicit a visceral response, not to tell a coherent story.
So, all things considered, and throwing in the most vile scene I have seen in any film since "The Human Centipede 2", I cannot in good consciousness recommend "Killer Joe" to anyone; especially if you are planning on going to KFC anytime soon.Follow me on Twitter @moviesmarkus.
Into this they call in 'Killer Joe' to do the job.It's a nasty movie, and treats the characters like trash.
It is Friedkin's second adaptation of a Tracy Letts play ('Bug' was his first) being based on Letts' debut play of the same name (the playwright also acts the film's screenwriter).The plot concerns the Smith family, spearheaded by the father/son duo of Chris and Ansel (Emile Hirsch and Thomas Haden Church forming an unbelievably gormless unit).
However, things become complicated when Joe takes Chris' simple-minded sister, Dottie (a superb Juno Temple) as a retainer for his 'services'.With his familiarity with the country that is home to this trailer trash culture, Letts manages to get past the characters simply being caricatures.
Additionally, the film also tiptoes around being misogynistic, something that is most notable in the now-infamous 'chicken leg' scene, which may cause you to never look at KFC the same way again.Yet, 'Killer Joe' is no depressing tale about a dysfunctional white trash family, instead it is an occasionally funny black comedy.
There is no reason to watch this film other than perhaps to see how much you can endure.The movie is based on a play by Tracy Letts and directed by William Friedkin.
For Killer Joe is one of the most uncomfortable films I have sat through in a very long time.Friedkin and his superlative ensemble cast suck you so deeply into the dead-end lives of the protagonists that, as the friend I saw the film with remarked, you forget that you are watching a movie.Of course, Friedkin is a past master of cinema verite.
I think he achieves that in Killer Joe. Whether you like the result will depend on whether you 'enjoy' watching people with little education, little money and little hope slowly and inexorably destroying themselves.Friedkin himself said, only half jokingly, that we weren't supposed to 'enjoy' the movie.
All the cast are good, and Thomas Haden Church as the bemused but essentially decent father, Matthew McConaughey as the eponymous lawman turned assassin and Juno Temple as his Lolita are all outstanding.Temple, daughter of British filmmaker and chronicler of the Sex Pistols Julien Temple, was 22 when she made Killer Joe, but she plays about 13 or 14.
William Friedkin clearly can still direct a bad-ass, butt-kicking movie and I think "Killer Joe" will be considered one of his best.
Matthew McConaughey is a very good actor, he was excellent with the role but the content was not his caliber.This is the worst movie that Matthew McConaughey has acted in, and I am surprised that he stooped so low do be part of such a low budget film.The movie was cheap and was not what I thought it would be.I kept waiting for it to get better but that failed to happen.Save your time and watch another movie that has a better story.If you want junk to entertain yourself with, this is it!I really don't understand how so many people would rate it above a 3.Cheesy and low budget..
But then it comes courtesy of William Friedkin who has never been know for subtlety.The story is not terribly unique: a drug dealing kid Chris(Emile Hirsch) needs money to pay off a bad gambling losses and hires a hit man who happens to also be a cop and a detective and is known only by Joe (Matthew McConaughey) to kill his degenerate mother for her life insurance money which is to go to the woman's daughter Dottie (Juno Temple) who lives with Chris' and her dad (Thomas Haden Church) and her new sleaze bucket mother (Gina Gershon).
In return this means that, for a movie like "Killer Joe" to work, the dialogs have to be extremely well-written AND the performers have to depict their characters with strong conviction and confidence.
McConaughey and Temple are ably backed up by Emile Hirsch as the indebted son Chris and Thomas Haden Church as the good- for-nothing father Ansel, whose world-weary one liners provide some much-needed comic relief during some of the most intense scenes of the film.
A young man, Chris (Emile Hirsch) in debt to a drug dealer and his father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) decide to hire a contract killer known as Killer Joe (Matthew McConaughey) to kill Chris' mother in order to claim $50,000 life insurance money.
I guess, the presence of McConaughey, Hirsch, and Haden Church intrigued me and while I think McConaughey did an adequate job of playing Killer Joe, a police officer/hit man for hire psychopath, I just left feeling that there were very few redeeming qualities in this film.
Temple's character (Hirsch's sister, Dottie) is overly off, annoying, and strangely child like and there is one scene in particular that will forever make me feel awkward when eating fried chicken (who have to see it in order to understand - but I'd recommend You-Tubing that one scene and not wasting 2 hours watching the whole film).
Killer Joe is a neo-noir film with some excellent performances from the cast that critics have enjoyed and therefore put Friedkin on the map again.
Well of course something goes wrong in the transaction and all hell breaks loose in this pulpy dark film.As good as Thomas Haden Church, Gina Gershon, Emile Hirsch, and Juno Temple are in this movie they are outshined by Matthew McConaughey's performance as this sadistic but charming detective.
Renowned director William Friedkin's ("The Exorcist", "The French Connection") take on Tracy Letts' screen/play "Killer Joe" is a timebomb of a movie.
Emile Hirsch can play desperate and dumb very well, Gina Gershon was cringingly good as the b- word of a stepmother, Thomas Haden Church convincing as the dumb yet resigned/given-up father, and Juno Temple's portrayal of the not-right- in-the-head sister is perfect considering the movie's atmosphere.Like "Bug", "Killer Joe" is based on a play, and on film it feels like one too - not necessarily a bad thing.
He consults his father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) about hiring detective-slash-contract-killer-on-the-side Joe Cooper to kill Chris' deadbeat mother in order to obtain a $50,000 insurance policy, which will go to Chris' younger sister, Dottie (Juno Temple).
Some of the other actors pull their weight, though - in particular, Thomas Haden Church, Juno Temple and Gina Gershon all deliver wonderful performances which give their relatively minor characters a lot more depth than the script gives them.McConaughey's acting isn't the only thing to keep Killer Joe from greatness, though; Friedkin juggles genres impressively, but it doesn't always work quite the way he intended it.
Joe makes Chris an offer, he'll keep Dottie as sexual collateral until the money is collected and his fee can be paid.Has I said in my Bernie review, 2011 was the biggest come back for Matthew McConaughey and in this movie he once again brings it his all and that's what I like to see from him.
This is a raw, independent film made by an Oscar winning director and adapted from a stage play.The screen story concerns a young drug dealer Chris (Emile Hirsch) in need of money hires a hit man who happens to also be a policeman Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) to kill his estranged mother for her life insurance money.The proceeds will go to her daughter Dottie (Juno Temple).