ViewGuide

Created Apr 17, 2014 12:51AM PST • Edited May 20, 2015 04:38PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   Tye Sheridan continues his JLaw moviestar ascent as yet another grievously put-upon Southern boy in Joe. Nicolas Cage delivers one of his best roles in years as Joe: classic Cage, peccadilloes galore, heavily armed. Textbook movie drama ensues. A wastrel man is made better by protecting an upright boy. Cage & Sheridan play these parts about as well as they can possibly be played. It’s still hard to watch, savagely sordid as it is.

   David Gordon Green’s movie brings to life a dog-eat-dog world, literally dog-eat-dog. It’s taken from a Larry Brown novel – Brown being the subject of the documentary The Rough South of Larry Brown. Watch Justified? That’s genteel compared to Joe.

   Basically what we’ve got here is second-rate Elmore Leonard, with lawmen only seen near the end, meaning the milieu is one of lives lived nasty, brutish and short.

   The acting however is damn near off the charts, especially Tye Sheridan, who delivers a performance comparable to the one Jennifer Lawrence gave in Winter’s Bone. Praise for a young moviestar gets no more fulsome. Nic Cage is at his most appealing as the flawed man who takes him under his wing, while Gary Poulter is fleetingly charming as G-Daawg, his odious Dad. Both father figures are raging alcoholics.

   See it for the acting, tolerate the sordidness. Just as Jennifer Lawrence already has The JLaw 5, Joe will be remembered in a future Tye Sheridan Top 5 list. He’s backing up Cage now, but notice he’s armed for bear.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Tye Sheridan opens the movie lecturing his odious Dad, who’s dead-drunk. You know he’s going to get hit and he knows he’s going to get hit, but he’s not afraid to say what must be said. Many more heroic scenes ensue for Sheridan, who is as appealing a leading man as has come along in a good long while. Following up his star-making performance in Mud alongside Matthew McConaughey and fellow teen Jacob Lofland, Sheridan is keeping pace with fellow rookie stars Liam James from The Way, Way Back and Nick Robinson from The Kings of Summer.

   Nicolas Cage was put into movies by his uncle Francis Ford Coppola to play flawed men like Joe in Joe. While not entirely into Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans territory, Joe is still a guy who lives on booze, cigarettes and junk food. Yet he looks like a guy with a personal chef and trainer. Ah, movies…

   Gary Poulte plays Sheridan’s tragically drunk father, to shambling perfection. G-Daawg — his jacket reads.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    Good 3.0

    David Gordon Green directs from a Gary Hawkins script of Larry Brown’s novel. Hawkins reveres Brown, who died of a heart attack in `04 at 53, a tragic Southern novelist till the end.

    Their film imagines a society so broken down it’s ruled by alcoholics. Consider Joe Exhibit 10,000 of the proposition that nihilism is very, very popular with filmmakers of a certain political bent.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

12. Play OK 2.5

13. Music Good 3.0

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.8

    Seriously sordid, stupidly sordid, sickly sordid, savagely sordid. Sufficiently warned?

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Savage 3.9

19. Rudeness Profane 2.8

21. Reality

    Glib 1.9

    Movie reality aside, which goes well into the surreal in terms of BioReality, the underlying reality purports that work crews go around Southern forests sloppily poisoning trees. Really?

22. Circumstantial Glib 2.0

23. Biological Surreal 2.6

24. Physical Natural 1.0