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Killer Joe


Directed by William Friedkin
Produced by Nicolas Chartier and Scott Einbinder
Screenplay by Tracy Letts Based on the play by Tracy Letts
With: Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Thomas Haden Church, Gina Gershon, and Marc Macaulay
Cinematography: Caleb Deschanel
Editing: Darrin Navarro
Music: Tyler Bates
Runtime: 102 min
Release Date: 29 June 2012
Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1
Color: Color

Killer Joe is the second collaboration between playwright/screenwriter Tracy Letts and director William Friedkin after their more successful 2006 film Bug (also based on a Letts play). The film provides Mathew McConaughey with the best of his many recent comeback roles as a slick Texas lawman who is a contract killer on the side. The NC-17-rated picture goes out of its way to be over-the-top in terms of its violent and sexual content, but where it really goes over-the-top is its depiction of how stupid all the characters (except Joe) are. I can never get all that interested in a movie where everyone is stupid, even if they are occasionally funny, and this is certainly no exception. Plus, much of the fighting is disappointingly staged for a Friedkin movie (fake punches and the like). The sexual relationship between Joe and the young, "slightly touched" daughter of the family (ostensibly the most interesting relationship of the movie) is never developed beyond the shock value of their first encounter. One grand, extended scene comprises the film’s third act—I'm guessing this is the main body of the original play—but what surrounds this material doesn’t either set it up, open it up, or contextualize it well enough to justify itself. I do appreciate Friedkin attempting to do something very different from his usual trick adherence to a theatrical play's stagebound qualities, especially since this is his second adaptation of a Tracy Letts play; there just isn’t enough here, apart from one pretty fuckin’ good, long scene with a disappointing finish.

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William Friedkin's second adaptation of a Tracy Letts play is not as successful as their powerful Bug (2003), but it does provide Mathew McConaughey with the best role of his “McConaissance,” playing the titular slick Texas lawman who is a contract killer on the side.