Rating of
2.5/4
Review: Killer Joe
MikePA - wrote on 10/27/12
Killer Joe is exactly what it wants to be: dark, vicious, and violent, but I get the feeling that it could have been a lot better. Matthew McConaughey delivers the performance of his career as the sadistic, twisted, wants-things-done-his-way "Killer" Joe Cooper. Director William Friedkin, who made the overrated The Exorcist (yeah, I said it), stages two intense sequences of pure evil and violence, which is why the movie got an NC-17 rating. One of these moments include the 25-minute climax, which is nothing short of tremendous. Friedkin successfully injects plenty of suspense in the scenes involving "Killer" Joe, which makes for a mostly enjoyable and nail-bitingly tense watch. Unfortunately, I didn't really care much about the supporting characters. To me, they were just a group of morons, which is the point, I guess. The film begins murky, the story is thinly executed, and when "Killer" Joe isn't on screen, the film loses the tension it builds. I was underwhelmed and non-compelled by the actual story at hand, and I didn't seem to care about the twists and the turns or the outcome of the supporting characters.
I'm recommending you rent the film for McConaughey's mesmerizing performance and the character "Killer" Joe himself. It's a shame that Friedkin creates such an intriguing character, whose dark mind you get wrapped up in, but can't build a totally "good" movie around him.
2.5/4
