Killer Joe

★★★★

(2011)

William Friedkin's films are usually shot through with an intese desperation and his latest, Killer Joe is no exception. Working again with Bug writer Tracy Letts, Friedkin revels in the grime and blood which the script allows him, creating a twisted and unsettling film. A film solely populated with instantly unlikeable characters, tainted with brutal violence and seriously dark humor, it tells the story of a trailer park family who hire the titular cop and part-time hitman (Matthew McConaughey) to knock off their mother for her insurance policy.

The desperate conniving family are small time drug dealer Chris (Emile Hirsch), his father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) and Ansel's new wife Sharla (Gina Gershon). When Chris and Ansel realise they can't bend Joe's payment rules they shockingly offer up Chris' naive teenage sister Lottie (Juno Temple) as a "retainer" for the dirty job at hand. This is Texas of course and, if the cinematic version of the middle of America has taught us anything, it's that things never ever go to plan there...

McConaughey oozes the drawling charm that has seen his career right over the years, delivering a measured and terrifying performance. Haden Chruch and Hirsch work remarkably well as the damaged father and son and Temple's sweetness and voice, though partly taken from Sissy Spacek's Holly in Terrence Malick's Badlands, thankfully gives us a slightly less psychotic performance in a film charged and driven by them. The pot boiler which Killer Joe turns into is superbly handled by Friedkin and Letts but it's real strength is in it's intensely effective final 20 minute act which may have some covering their eyes or their mouths.

After the remarkable production of Letts' play, Bug, it looks like the ageing director, renowned for Oscar winners The Exorcist and The French Connection,  has rediscovered some of the urgency that made his early work so vital. Though the car wreck violence clumsily overpowers much of the smart dazzle of the film, it succeeds by using a surprising, welcomed and off killer comedy which deftly manages to break the surface at just the right moments. Although certainly not for the faint of heart, Killer Joe is undoubtably another ragged and bloody notch on Friedkin's belt.