Killer Joe review

The hype…
William Friedkin ('The French Connection', 'The Exorcist') drags Matthew McConaughey into the pulpy world of a Texas trailer park where murder, intrigue and worse are on the cards.

The story…
In a run-down Texas trailer park, the Smith family are approaching a dark time in their history. Oldest son Chris (Emile Hirsch) is sick of his mother's boozy, violent antics. She abandoned her family to shack up with another man, and Chris thinks he's found a way to settle old debts.

At the trailer of his father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), an affable but slow everyman, he reveals his heinous scheme: hire corrupt cop 'Killer' Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) to bump off the bane of their lives, pay him with a hefty life insurance payout that will mature for airy and possible not-all-there little sister Dottie (Juno Temple) and live off the rest.

But Joe isn't about to make the bargain lightly, and with Ansel's meddling and untrustworthy new wife Sharla (Gina Gershon) involved, matters are liable to become even more complex. And complex is just what you don't want when Killer Joe's involved.

The breakdown…
Is it a comedy? Is it a drama? Is it a noirish Lynchian nightmare? Well, it's sort of all three.

Friedkin paints a darkly insane picture of the trailer parks of the South, harnessing all of the energy of Tracy Letts' screenplay (based on his own stage play of the same name) to produce an experience that's bizarre and brilliant.

The central story of a hired gun taking out the absent matriarch makes for some fertile intrigue. Emile Hirsch's bumbling, scheming son is evil and incompetence personified - a sort of more insane Bobby from 'Twin Peaks', with all of the potential for malice and mishaps that implies.

McConaughey is equally impressive as the menacing killer cop who indulges in some seriously deviant behaviour. He treads a perilous tightrope with his deadpan demon of a character, and never relents in the descent in the darker recesses of the pulp villain. His 'relationship' with Temple's innocent character Dottie in particular is repulsively compelling, only topped by a crazy scene involving fried chicken and violence.

But Friedkin prevents this from becoming dangerously gratuitous by slathering on cynicism and absurdity in spades. Stilted dialogue, sheer oddity and a flavour of the ridiculous make the main course of seedy drama all the more palatable.

On this front, Thomas Haden Church is invaluable. His good-natured but dumb patriarch has a series of laugh-out-loud moments that shatter and subvert the tensions before they become more serious than the vacuous, thrill-seeking storyline can sustain.

The result is unsavoury, as grubby and yet enjoyable as the fast food Friedkin deploys so devilishly - and, of course, just as unhealthy and difficult to digest.

The verdict…
Grimy and ridiculous, this pulpy Texan noir is as riotously enjoyable as it is frightening and subversive. Worth watching for some of the superb central performances alone, but be warned: you'll never see McConaughey in the same way again.

Rating: 4/5

'Killer Joe'  is due to be released in the UK on 29 June 2012. Certificate: 18.