KILLER JOE directed by William Friedkin, written by Tracy Letts from his play, with Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Gina Gershon and Thomas Haden Church. A VVS Films release. 103 minutes. Opens Friday (August 10). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNNN
Making the most of his late-career renaissance, William Friedkin follows his manic Bug with another adaptation of a Tracy Letts play – and this one, incredibly enough, is even crazier, bloodier and weirder than the one about the guy who convinces Ashley Judd that she’s got microscopic surveillance devices under her skin.
Killer Joe is a big old slice of Texas mayhem in which a Dallas idiot (Emile Hirsch) hires a hit man (Matthew McConaughey) to murder his mother for the insurance, only to see the plan spiral almost immediately out of control, expanding to the point where the idiot’s beatific sister (Juno Temple) becomes the assassin’s “retainer.”
Letts sets up a revolving door of betrayals and reversals worthy of the Coen brothers, and Friedkin’s embrace of digital cinema lets him create a vivid and unnaturally lurid landscape in which the amped-up performances of the entire cast seem entirely at home.
McConaughey – who’s enjoying a renaissance of his own – oozes genteel menace as the eponymous assassin, but Thomas Haden Church steals the picture as Hirsch’s defeated father, slouching through the action like the hapless, helpless fool he knows himself to be.
