Joe

A film set in New York. Bill is an advertising executive. Wealthy, orderly, and his daughter is living with a man who uses drugs. She is taken to hospital. Bill goes to the flat. There is an argument and the man dies. Then he walks into a bar. Joe is in the bar. A factory worker; he drinks, he talks, and while he talks he lists everyone he hates: hippies, black people, the young, communists. He knows none of them and hates all of them. Bill lets a sentence slip. Joe hears it and does not believe him; then he reads the paper, believes him, and comes looking for him. From there the film is about a strange friendship. The two men are from different classes and have nothing in common; the only thing there is a crime, and Joe is proud of it. What the narrative is interested in is not the killing but rage: the film takes the generational and class tension of early 1970s America as its direct subject and makes neither side look good. The last section ends with a raid on a house and its ending is hard. Peter Boyle plays Joe. Dennis Patrick is in the cast, and Susan Sarandon in her first film. John G. Avildsen directed. It was made cheaply and was an unexpected box office success; that some audiences applauded the character caused argument, and Boyle said he was troubled by the effect of the part. Who it is for: anyone interested in hard American cinema of the 1970s and the arguments of that period. Who it is not for: anyone looking for temperate language; the character's speech is racist throughout and the film passes it on without correction.