Killer Joe begins with something straight out of the Bible, with deluging rain threatening to drown the Dallas-based trailer park and its requisite barking dog. A brother yells through the flimsy door for his sister Dottie (Juno Temple), whose stuffed-animal-populated room and TigerBeat-cutout-plastered- door bespeak dreams outside of her dilapidating residential community.
The film’s title seeks the audience’s focus on Joe, a full-time detective and part-time killer-for-hire. But, the true meat of the film is the Smith family. Chris (Emile Hirsch) is a drug dealer with a six-thousand dollar debt. His father, Ansel (Thomas Hayden Church) is as dimwitted as Chris, spits on his own floor, and is married to the whorish Sharla (Gina Gershon, who gives the performance of her career). Such is the composition of characters in this trailer park. The states of their lives culminate in drinking, drugging, and fighting.
To call this family a clan would be in contradiction to the definition. Whereas a clan is a system of order hinging on the blood-bond of a distant family member, there is also a semblance of organization and camaraderie. The Smiths have neither. They are disjointed, ruthless, and individualistic – save Dottie, who mostly comes off as oblivious. Like a clan, their motives are the same: Chris, Ansel, and Sharla strive for money, but their loyalties are fairweather, as are their convictions.
To pay his debt, Chris plots to take advantage of his mother’s life insurance policy that will pay out $50,000 at the time of her death. As Chris hears it, Dottie is the beneficiary, and with no interest in the money for herself, Chris, Ansel, and Sharla are sure to relieve her of such a burden. Dottie seems rather disinterested in the potential windfall, noting she hears them “all talking about killing mama,” and that she thinks “it’s a fine idea.”
No problems thus far.
But the Smith’s greed is equal to their callowness. None of them can pull the trigger, despite their proclaimed hatred for her, so they hire Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey, whose performances in this and Magic Mike have come to pose him as a legitimate actor, providing he stays away from folks like Katherine Heigl, Sarah Jessica Paker, and Kate Hudson). Cooper, dressed in black and silencing the barking pit bull with his mere presence, is all business. He seems to be the only one in this dynamic that comprehends the severity of murder and its various repercussions. Therefore, he has a few rules: 1) “if you’re caught…you are not, under any circumstances, to reveal my identity 2) payment is $25,000 in cash in advance 3) – we never get to three because Chris lacks the down payment.
Our ignorance of three resembles the Smith’s pervasively endemic ignorance and provides roots for the chaos that will ensue.
Most of this chaos stems from the Smiths’ eagerness to off the mother. They don’t have $25,000, but are willing to settle on a retainer until the insurance policy can be cashed and Joe paid his money. The retainer? Dottie.
I’d like to say that Killer Joe progresses in such a way that the Smiths become a clan, but they don’t. I’d like to think that Dottie objects to being treated like fungible chattel, but she doesn’t – not really.
Like the play on which it is based, Killer Joe – in a number of ways – leaves us hanging and questioning what has happened and why things have happened. Thus far, I’m not sure if this is a benefit or a detriment to its narrative. At one point, it feels as if Chris has a moment of conscience and his personality strangely and inexplicably flips. Perhaps this is where the intermission falls within the play, and perhaps the lag in time between act one and two gives the audience time to process the Smith’s nefariousness, in hopes that the second act will offer some sort of reprieve. But there is no lag in William Friedkin’s film. There’s an abrupt jerk, and we’re left to wonder why this inorganic-feeling moment has transpired.
The same criticism (?) goes for Joe as a character. He is meticulous and cold, calculated and sadistically charming, which is certainly a testament to McConaughey. At the same time, he becomes unhinged, but we’re left to wonder why he’s become so unhinged. Perhaps the title should clue us in, and we should expect nothing less, but it feels so out of left field and, well, gratuitous. In a way, Killer Joe is giving us a glimpse at this permanently locked underclass whose trust in law to do something illegal has done little less than doom them forever, but it also leads us to believe that Joe realizes this at about the same time that the Smith do, and this seems curious for such a calculated character.
