Killer Joe

Killer Joe (2011) is about a family in Texas. Chris cannot pay a drug debt and decides to have his mother killed for her life insurance. They hire a police officer who works as a contract killer. When they cannot pay his fee up front, Joe takes the sister in the house as a retainer. The source is Tracy Letts's 1993 play. He later wrote August: Osage County, which won a Pulitzer, and he adapted this himself. William Friedkin directed. He made it at seventy six, four decades after The Exorcist and The French Connection. Matthew McConaughey plays Joe. The part is counted among the films that carried him out of romantic comedy into what was later called the McConaissance. Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Thomas Haden Church and Gina Gershon fill out the cast. It received an NC-17 in America and Friedkin refused to cut it. That severely limited distribution; many cinema chains do not show NC-17 films and many newspapers will not carry advertising for them. Friedkin defended the decision and said the film should be shown as it was. The scene at the dinner table late in the film is the direct reason for the rating and is genuinely hard to watch. It runs 102 minutes. Good for: black comedy, Southern gothic, and McConaughey. Less good for: the sexual violence and humiliation are extremely heavy and the warning is not overstated. Nobody in it is sympathetic. The stage origin shows; the film takes place almost entirely in two rooms.