Killer Joe

KILLER JOE               B                     

USA  (103 mi)  2011  d:  William Friedkin                    Official site

Friedkin’s second consecutive film based on a Tracy Letts play, adapted by the Pulitzer playwright himself from his first work written in his mid-twenties, is a blisteringly dark morality play exaggerated to gruesome and grotesque proportions by poverty and family dysfunction, where the seedy, trailer trash atmosphere gives rise to violence, corruption, and blatant exploitation.  Initially, the first thought that comes to mind is the Quincy Jones song by the same title Quincy Jones - Killer Joe - YouTube  (5:10), but this is not in the film.  The jazzy musical score, however, from Tyler Bates underlies much of the psychological tension which draws heavily from the sophisticated, underlying groove of the soundtrack.  Shot in and around New Orleans, the film is notable for its distinctive locations, supposedly more than two dozen, where they always seem to be set in the middle of nowhere, suggesting life at the end of the world.  While there are comical elements that turn distastefully extreme, the film is replete with disturbing content, including graphic violence, sexual degradation, and some brutal mistreatment of women, likely spurring cries of misogyny, especially when used to comical effect.  The film challenges the concept of moral order, however, especially the male view, where resorting to criminal behavior (boys will be boys) is deemed acceptable so long as people get what’s coming to them and a semblance of social order is preserved.  At times the film borders on the ridiculous, adding a comic book feel to the woes of trailer park depravity, something along the lines of Frank Miller’s SIN CITY (2005), where sex and violence merge into a twisted and perverse sense of human outrage, which ends up being the closest thing to justice.

Killer Joe (Matthew McConaughey) is a Dallas detective who moonlights on the side as a killer for hire, the stereotypical image of a man in black and an avenging angel who straddles the fence between human salvation and the worst Mephistophelean nightmare.  McConaughey brings a mark of distinction to the outrageously uninhibited role and is up to the formidable task of portraying the personification of evil, playing with unusual relish the moral cesspool he rises out of.  Repulsive and often shocking, Friedkin has created another one of his demented but always provocative horror stories, this one laced in noirish black comedy, often pushing the boundaries of absurdity.  Emile Hirsch, so good in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild (2007), may be slightly miscast here, the only weak link in an otherwise superb cast, is Chris, a lowlife, Texas drug dealer who couldn’t be more of a pathetic loser, always down on his luck, but now in dire need of $5000 he owes to a loan shark.  This sets into motion the family dynamic, as he’s been kicked out of his mother’s house and now comes crawling to his father Ansel, the irrepressible Thomas Hayden Church, excellent here as a passively subdued, always mentally challenged good ol’ boy living in a dilapidated trailer with his sexually extroverted wife Sharla, Gina Gershon, and Chris’s overly protected sister Dottie, Juno Temple, from Gregg Araki’s Kaboom (2010).  Both women prance around in a state of natural undress that borders on exhibitionism for Sharla, but Dottie is the virginal picture of innocence, an angelic creature unspoiled by the world’s darker impulses, where the leer factor enters into play with the audience, veering into sexual exploitation territory, conjuring up lewd and lascivious thoughts.  While the action centers around the men, the heart of the story instead focuses upon the women. 

Desperate to save himself, Chris comes up with the harebrained scheme to hire a hit man to murder his hateful mother, someone he and his father conclude nobody would miss, especially since Dottie is the sole beneficiary of the $50,000 life insurance policy.  When Killer Joe reveals his nonnegotiable $25,000 up front fee, the deal seems off until Joe suggests the idea of a retainer, where he takes Dottie as collateral until they come up with the payment.  These dumb and contemptuous degenerates, who continually bite themselves throughout in the ass, actually rationalize that “it just might do her some good,” cruelly leaving her alone for a dinner date with Joe that she never knew was coming, where the eerie horror of her sexual initiation recalls Treat Williams and Laura Dern in SMOOTH TALK (1985), only becoming more graphically deplorable.  When Joe moves into Dottie’s room afterwards, literally taking over the family, Chris is suddenly repulsed by his own reprehensible behavior and has a change of heart, only to find Joe is in no hurry to let any of them out of his clutches.  This is a film that wallows in its wickedness, relishing its accelerating maliciousness like an after dinner dessert.  The over-the-top, choreographed mayhem that develops is utterly appalling and absurdly ridiculous, perhaps even objectionable, but Joe has to be tarnished by his own wickedness for the final act to matter, as he’s no hero, but a thoroughly disgusting sewer rat.  While both Joe and Dottie are brought together by the most ghoulish circumstances of a Grimm fairy tale, the irony is that when Dottie’s Prince Charming finally arrives he’s a brutally efficient killer for hire.  McConaughey brings a fiendish delight to what constitutes male evil, yet his authoritative masculinity, as opposed to the bumbling and ineffectual father and son act, suggests he’s the kind of man women are drawn to, often without thinking, blinded and deluded by dreams of what they want to believe—that’s Killer Joe.  Beautifully shot by Zooey Deschanel’s father, Caleb, the film concludes with an audacious and sexually haughty choice of music Clarence Carter- Strokin' - YouTube (4:39) playing over the final credits. 

Bug

BUG                B                     

USA  (102 mi)  2006  d:  William Friedkin 

From a brilliant opening shot that swoops down from an aerial view of a darkened sky into a desolate, neon-lit, hole-in-the-wall Rustic Motel, a woman stands alone outside her door as the phone rings simultaneous to the credit title – BUG, where such perfect timing gives it an ominous ring.  Very much in the exact same mode as her previous performance wearing no makeup in COME SUNDAY MORNING (2006), though venturing into completely unexplored territory here, Ashley Judd plays a feisty, independent minded, hard-drinking country girl working at a roadside bar, whose sexual interests appear to run toward whoever’s available, that initially happens to be one of the other younger cocktail waitresses, the blond, sexy, heavily tattooed R.C. played by Lynn Collins.  The two of them bring a guy (Michael Shannon) back to her motel room for a little intimate party, and the guy’s shyness intrigues her, as it’s quite a contrast to her overly aggressive, abusive ex, Harry Connick Jr, who’s about to be paroled from prison.  Shannon is the kind of guy who naturally fades into the woodwork leaving no trace of himself, easily forgettable, yet what comes out of his mouth is quietly soft-spoken and reflective, revealing an awkward, uncomfortable nature that needs nurturing and reassurance.  As he apparently has no place to go, she allows him to spend the night, as she’s been getting suspicious prank phone calls from a caller who never says a word, which she believes are coming from her ex-husband. 

Initially based on a play by Tracy Letts, where the film requires the audience to accept skips of large blocks of time, similar to the structure of a play, the staging and subject matter bear a strange resemblance to Sam Shepard’s play FOOL IN LOVE (1985), as both take place in total isolation, far beyond any traces of civilization in what looks like the most run down, dilapidated motel imaginable.  Both feature attractive, vulnerable women with indescribably dark secrets, and both feature men who stretch the limits of the imagination, where the women can’t seem to help themselves from following these dreamy yet equally demented men into their own mysteriously scarred pasts.  While Shepard offsets his strangely bizarre lovers with a gentle and soft-spoken gentleman caller, who might provide a much needed respit from her tortured soul, this film counters with the manic fury of Harry Connick Jr, who plants a fist to the mouth of Judd as his way of saying hello after a two year absence, where she must obviously look elsewhere from the dead end path of fear and abuse, which leads her into the hands of this strange and peculiar guy.  What does transpire is her complete willingness to lose herself over this guy she barely knows, where their first sexual encounter ends with a near subliminal image of a bug that only begins their journey together. 

An odd tale of love and loneliness, perhaps a variation on beauty and the beast, BUG is a bit preposterous, but an extremely effective escalation of horror taking place inside the minds of this young couple, where there are sudden shifts in mood that only grow darker and more intense, and where out of the blue, the film veers closer to Cronenberg’s THE FLY (1986), as once he convinces her to believe the room is infested with unseen bugs, where he offers his own off-the-wall, paranoiac theories about their origins, both characters morph into transformed versions of themselves that bear little resemblance to their former selves, where even the look of the motel room undergoes such a radical transformation that one wonders if we missed something.  When the guy’s army doctor arrives, paying some credence to his wacky theories about being the victim of horrific medical experimentation, Friedkin kicks into high gear with a truly dramatic, somewhat surrealistic surge of delirium that defies explanation, exaggerated by the frenetic movements of a hand held camera, pulsating white lights, and the elevated use of sound from a hovering helicopter, all of which combine to shatter our sense of complacency, where an unknown, unseen force is truly kicking at the doors of our perceptions.  Nothing short of an apocalypse is waiting outside.  The acting is especially good, with Judd pushing the limits of her persona beyond anyone’s expectations, becoming nakedly trusting, even describing herself as a woman who looks surprisingly better with her clothes off, then bravely proves that to be the case.  The growing anguish that accompanies her nightmarish descent into legitimate horror carries no false notes; Shannon as well lends an off-the-fringe believability, leading to an inevitable conclusion that feels light years from the shy initial encounter that started it all.  Please note – the film continues during the final end credits, leaving a final image only after the credit sequence has actually ended. 

To Live and Die in LA

TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA           B+               

USA  (116 mi)  1985  d:  William Friedkin

Guess what, Uncle Sam don’t give a shit about your expenses. You want bread, fuck a baker.       —Richard Chance (William Peterson)

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think this was a Michael Mann film, a gritty portrait of Los Angeles filled with a stylistic flourish from the exquisite cinematography of Robby Müller with gorgeous shots of the city at sunrise and dusk illuminated by a sheen of smog and a 1980’s Wang Chung soundtrack that gives the film a pulsating edge.  Very much driven by a synthesized techno beat so prominently featured in FLASHDANCE (1983) and the Miami Vice TV series (1984 – 90), this is a hard hitting, adrenaline-laced cop drama where the cops straddle the same ethical line as the criminals, in fact they are mirror images of one another, oftentimes getting more caught up in the business than they’d prefer, usually driven by a manic personality that settles for nothing less than a full-out assault.  Using a cast of relative unknowns, featuring two prominent Chicago actors who got their start in local community theater, this was William Peterson’s first starring movie role while John Pankow, whose older brother plays in the rock band Chicago, had worked earlier in Miami Vice.  Both play FBI agents in the counterfeit division, Chance and Vukovich, where their boss is murdered when he gets too close to one operation, giving this a tone of revenge, where getting this guy becomes personal, using any means necessary to bring him down.  Willem Dafoe is excellent as the cold-blooded killer and counterfeiter Rick Masters, a complete professional who carries out his business with icy control, whose creepiness becomes more accentuated through his eerie calm.  He also has his hand in kinky sex and modern art, often blending the two, almost always with a gorgeous girl, Debra Feuer, who follows his every lead.   

Shot all on location in some of the seedier sections of town, Friedkin offers a cynically realistic approach to the film noir crime thriller, using a near documentary style, but the characters are all outcasts, outlaws beyond the reach of the law and cops who think they are above the law, both living on the margins, creating a feeling of detachment and alienation.  One of the most extraordinary scenes is watching Masters diligently working at his craft, printing counterfeit bills, step by step using his artistic skills with the meticulous precision of a Bach cantata, where his detailed professionalism is nothing less than impressive, offering a window to the audience into this highly skilled criminal enterprise.  It’s interesting that Friedkin reveals so clearly what Chance is up against, as this is Peterson’s film, where he dominates the action sequences and all the build up to them, as he’s a man on a mission, an adrenaline junkie who’s not afraid to bungee jump off a bridge with a rope tethered to his foot, swinging just above the water’s edge, creating a rush of energy that he needs to make him feel alive.  He also has a girl, Ruth (Darlanne Fluegel), an inmate out on parole working at a strip club where she hears things, where Chance uses her for sex and information, threatening to cut off her parole if she stops feeding him tips.  His moral character is questionable, as he’s like a cowboy with an itchy trigger finger, obsessed with tracking down his man, where he doesn’t care what methods are used to pull it off.  His partner Vukovich is more nervous about his full throttle, free-wheeling style, thinking it’s reckless and outside the bounds of department regulations, but it’s his partner, a guy you just don’t cross in police business, so he goes along with it, creating, in effect, a counterfeit persona.

The measure of an action thriller, of course, is the action, and this one features a doozy of a car chase, one precipitated by Chance’s dubious choice to carry out a robbery to raise the needed cash in an undercover sting operation that his own bureau won’t cover.  What seemed like a sure bet turns into a sprawling mess, where they literally kidnap a guy for the contents of his briefcase.  In perhaps the turning point in the film, they bring the guy to a freeway underpass to open the contents, but he hasn’t got the key, so in a fit of rage Chance repeatedly smashes the briefcase against the cement pylons only to discover they are taking rifle fire from the road above.  This event seems to activate his hair trigger, clicking the on switch, as the ensuing car chase ends up as a hair-raising ride through a crowded warehouse district before ending up on the freeway going the wrong way, creating a tremendous logjam, not to mention a stockpile of cars smashing into one another.  This is thrillingly photographed, slowly developing where initially you're not even aware it is a car chase before it kicks into high gear, where the action seems to symbolize Chance’s spiraling moral void, as the look into his eyes as he’s driving suggest the actions of a madman.  Just as they think they might have gotten away, Frieidkin yet again defies all expectations by continuing the heist gone wrong theme, where the ramifications are endless, all spinning out of control, where the audience is treated to a visceral experience that again opens a window into this kind of dangerous world, where Vukovich especially continually sees his career and his life passing before his eyes during the final third of the film.  This is a rare style of film in that it provides incidents of graphic nudity mixed with blunt trauma in such an entertaining style, which was highly unusual in its day.  The counterfeit theme is intriguing as well, blurring the lines of moral corruption between the police and the criminals, where the Los Angeles police are notorious for their rampant abuse and misconduct, where it’s impossible to tell with the human eye just which cops and what pedestrians walking down the street are free of criminal interests and associations.