When I was younger, I'd occasionally read something, like a Hemingway or John Knowles novel, like it, and then recommend it to my mom. She'd read it, sigh, and say, "too depressing," before picking up something by John Grisham. Her critique was purely generic rather than technical: Without telling you what a book had done wrong, she merely wanted to express that she didn't cotton to that kind of thing.
Killer Joe, William Friedkin's gleefully adept trailer-park noir, seems to have been reviewed thus far by a lot of people like Mom. Despite that it's tautly written, brilliantly cast and acted, and hilariously funny, two out of five "top critics" on Rotten Tomatoes wouldn't recommend it, well, because they just don't like that kind of thing.
The movie is the story of Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch), a small-time drug dealer hunted for a debt to his gangster boss after Chris' detestable mother, Adele, rips off his stash. Getting wind that Adele has a life insurance policy with his sister, Dottie (Juno Temple), as sole beneficiary, Chris enlists Dottie and the pair's father, Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) and his wife, Sharla (Gina Gershon), to put Adele out of everyone's misery before splitting the cash. Dimly aware of the risks of murder and insurance fraud, they seek professional help.
Enter Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a police detective who contract kills on the side. But the conspirators are too poor to afford him, leading to an arrangement in which, in lieu of cash up front, Dottie is kept as sexual collateral pending the insurance payout. As one might expect, things get appreciably worse from there.
While all of the principals dress up and play Dallas white trash with aplomb, what drives the film is McConaughey's Joe, by turns glib, genteel, and taciturn--precisely the bipolar mix one might expect from a lawman who is also a casual murderer. His journey from coolly in-command to unhinged is underwritten by a pitch-perfect sleazy charm that always seemed extant-but-misplaced in McConaughey's romcom roles. Joe's interplay with Dottie and the always-ambiguous level of mutual sincerity within leaves open the final possibility that we may have just watched a dirty, broken love story.
The script, adapted from his own eponymous play by Tracy Letts, is a deep-fried joy, making the audience alternately cringe on command and laugh, almost always guiltily. And I think herein lies the problem of critical reception. Few would want to admit that they spent two hours in the real world alternately laughing at the depravity of the trailer park or sympathizing with sociopathic killers. It can neatly be termed the "no one to root for" problem, as in, "the film ultimately disappoints because it leaves us no one to root for." But film noir has never left us anyone to root for. The genre is a low-rent morality play in which we watch base motives turn people wild, a vicarious freak show that lionizes and shames the beast within all at once.
Hence, Killer Joe has been called cynical and exploitative, as if this were a flaw and not one of its central aims. Here we get a little meta-criticism: The only sensible metric for reviewing a film for other people is to judge the film for what it is, on its own terms, and not what it isn't. This is exactly how food criticism and wine criticism and, really, most criticisms work. One doesn't review a merlot and then give it a poor score because one doesn't like merlot and then expect to be taken seriously. The question at hand should not be whether you like the genre, but rather if the thing to be observed is good at what it does. Arguing against the film by saying that that it is, to paraphrase one critic, the Jerry Springer Show taken to its natural conclusions, is a bit like saying that one is angry at the bank because it doesn't sell lettuce.
In short, critics who have a conceptual or generic problem with a film have plenty of options. They can see other kinds of film that are more to their tastes; they can write scripts for the films they feel ought to be made; they can even responsibly state up front that something isn't their cup of tea but is nevertheless well-crafted. But giving poor marks to a film about desperate, ignorant, morally reprobate poor people for being a film about desperate, ignorant, morally reprobate poor people is simply smug, self-gratifying nonsense.
Moreover, even the MPAA seems to disapprove of Killer Joe, slapping the film with a death-sentence NC-17 rating. What does a film no more violent than half of Tarantino's oeuvre and far less bloody than any of the Saw or Hostel species of joyless torture porn do to deserve this? Why does a closeup of cutting through screaming people's ankles with a scalpel garner an "R," while killer Joe is declared unfit for the general public? Because it shows body parts that humans are born with, of course. It is always good to be reminded that the MPAA considers murder by graphic dismemberment more appropriate for children than penises and vaginas.
Killer Joe, William Friedkin's gleefully adept trailer-park noir, seems to have been reviewed thus far by a lot of people like Mom. Despite that it's tautly written, brilliantly cast and acted, and hilariously funny, two out of five "top critics" on Rotten Tomatoes wouldn't recommend it, well, because they just don't like that kind of thing.
The movie is the story of Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch), a small-time drug dealer hunted for a debt to his gangster boss after Chris' detestable mother, Adele, rips off his stash. Getting wind that Adele has a life insurance policy with his sister, Dottie (Juno Temple), as sole beneficiary, Chris enlists Dottie and the pair's father, Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) and his wife, Sharla (Gina Gershon), to put Adele out of everyone's misery before splitting the cash. Dimly aware of the risks of murder and insurance fraud, they seek professional help.
Enter Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a police detective who contract kills on the side. But the conspirators are too poor to afford him, leading to an arrangement in which, in lieu of cash up front, Dottie is kept as sexual collateral pending the insurance payout. As one might expect, things get appreciably worse from there.
While all of the principals dress up and play Dallas white trash with aplomb, what drives the film is McConaughey's Joe, by turns glib, genteel, and taciturn--precisely the bipolar mix one might expect from a lawman who is also a casual murderer. His journey from coolly in-command to unhinged is underwritten by a pitch-perfect sleazy charm that always seemed extant-but-misplaced in McConaughey's romcom roles. Joe's interplay with Dottie and the always-ambiguous level of mutual sincerity within leaves open the final possibility that we may have just watched a dirty, broken love story.
The script, adapted from his own eponymous play by Tracy Letts, is a deep-fried joy, making the audience alternately cringe on command and laugh, almost always guiltily. And I think herein lies the problem of critical reception. Few would want to admit that they spent two hours in the real world alternately laughing at the depravity of the trailer park or sympathizing with sociopathic killers. It can neatly be termed the "no one to root for" problem, as in, "the film ultimately disappoints because it leaves us no one to root for." But film noir has never left us anyone to root for. The genre is a low-rent morality play in which we watch base motives turn people wild, a vicarious freak show that lionizes and shames the beast within all at once.
Hence, Killer Joe has been called cynical and exploitative, as if this were a flaw and not one of its central aims. Here we get a little meta-criticism: The only sensible metric for reviewing a film for other people is to judge the film for what it is, on its own terms, and not what it isn't. This is exactly how food criticism and wine criticism and, really, most criticisms work. One doesn't review a merlot and then give it a poor score because one doesn't like merlot and then expect to be taken seriously. The question at hand should not be whether you like the genre, but rather if the thing to be observed is good at what it does. Arguing against the film by saying that that it is, to paraphrase one critic, the Jerry Springer Show taken to its natural conclusions, is a bit like saying that one is angry at the bank because it doesn't sell lettuce.
In short, critics who have a conceptual or generic problem with a film have plenty of options. They can see other kinds of film that are more to their tastes; they can write scripts for the films they feel ought to be made; they can even responsibly state up front that something isn't their cup of tea but is nevertheless well-crafted. But giving poor marks to a film about desperate, ignorant, morally reprobate poor people for being a film about desperate, ignorant, morally reprobate poor people is simply smug, self-gratifying nonsense.
Moreover, even the MPAA seems to disapprove of Killer Joe, slapping the film with a death-sentence NC-17 rating. What does a film no more violent than half of Tarantino's oeuvre and far less bloody than any of the Saw or Hostel species of joyless torture porn do to deserve this? Why does a closeup of cutting through screaming people's ankles with a scalpel garner an "R," while killer Joe is declared unfit for the general public? Because it shows body parts that humans are born with, of course. It is always good to be reminded that the MPAA considers murder by graphic dismemberment more appropriate for children than penises and vaginas.
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