TIFF Movie Review – Joe (2013)

An ex-con becomes a mentor and fierce protector of a hard-luck kid.

Looking for work is Gary (Tye Sheridan) who comes from a family of drifters led by a drunken and volatile patriarch; he finds employment with an ex-con named Joe Ransom (Nicolas Cage) who runs his own business poisoning trees for lumber companies.  A friendship develops between the man and teenage boy that is threatened by two vicious people, Willie (Ronnie Gene Blevins) who has a long standing feud with Joe, and the Gary’s father.  As the conflict escalates Joe decides to settle things once and for all.

The truth is I was going to avoid this movie because I do not like Nicolas Cage (The Rock) as an actor; however, I was surprised to discover that I was enjoying his performance.  Tye Sheridan (The Tree of Life) is equally as good as the protégé with lots of potential who is desperate to get away from squalor in which his family lives.  Ronnie Gene Blevins (Dark Canyon) does a sound job of portraying a psychopath with a grudge. 

When Gary and Joe are looking for the lost dog of the latter it serves as bonding sequence which has some funny moments involving a cigarette lighter and facial expressions.  Filmmaker David Gordon Green has returned to the dark tone of Undertow (2004) where there are no likeable characters.  In many ways Joe would be a great companion piece with Winter’s Bone (2010) which makes one wonder how anyone could survive living in such nasty and bleak communities.