#69: Joe (2013)

Nice.

My name is Ed, and I am desperately trying to win the lottery before I run out of money and have to live in a bin. You might think pinning all your hopes on winning the lottery is stupid, but I have a plan. I am picking the lottery numbers using Nicolas Cage films.

Joe contains something unprecedented, as far as I can remember:

FULL. BEARD. CAGE.

We’ve had various arrangements of hair on and around Cage’s head, but the beard here is very, very, powerful. Hold me Mr Cage, tell me it will be okay. Tell me I will win the lottery.

It’s a bit sad that, at this point in Cage’s career, it’s notable that this is the second actual proper film in a row – i.e. something you can at least imagine someone watching by choice even if they aren’t trying to win the lottery by watching all of the Nicolas Cage films.

Joe is the rather melancholy tale of a troubled man trying to finally make an honest go of it as a tree poisoner in a grim bit of furthest flung Texas. He’s not sure if he can save himself, but he can at least try to save the teenage boy he’s somehow become a sort of substitute father to. By helping him to become a tree poisoner. Is tree poisoner a real job? They even have special tree poisoning backpacks with poison-dispensing axes.

As if a film about tree poisoning wasn’t upbeat enough, the other major character is the boy’s real father, a spectacularly unpleasant violent alcoholic drifter, vividly portrayed by Gary Poulter, in his first and only major acting role. When cast, Poulter was homeless — his only other screen credit was an appearance as an extra nearly 30 years previously: he was found dead months before the release of Joe, which provides some much-needed feel-good background.

There’s not a lot about this film that isn’t bleak: by the end there are a few notes of redemption, but you’ve got to get through a lot of dark before there’s any kind of light on display. This is a violent, ugly, hellish world, with no authority apparently willing or able to intervene. Though the police make a few appearances, in the main everyone is left to get on with whatever unspeakable acts they feel like doing. I don’t know if this is a damning indictment or extremely unfair portrayal of e.g. Texas’s Child Protective Services department, but it’s not exactly a tourist board ad.

Like The Frozen Ground, this is not in itself a stand out Cage role, but it’s good work that manages to show more than it tells. It’s not a wildly entertaining performance, but that’s not what the material needs: one might reasonably Cage’s judgement regarding the roles he picks, but more restrained work like this does suggest that when he is ‘out of control’ that it’s a little bit more deliberate than he’s sometimes given credit for.

Joe has some compelling performances, but it is tough to recommend — in some ways it echoes the likes of Bad Lieutenant and Wild At Heart, but there the bleakness was at least tempered with surreality and black humour. Is this supposed to throw the more banal miseries of human existence into sharp relief, as we reflect that at least we’re not having the shit kicked out of us by our pisshead dads? I dunno. Hopefully it’ll win me the lottery.

THE NUMBERS

3 — When we first meet Joe, he’s sitting in his truck, while outside it pisses it down the rain. The radio announces that there will be 3 inches of rain.

10 — One of the cars parked outside the general store is a ‘Custom Deluxe 10’. No idea what this means.

16 — When Joe first meets the Gary, the teenage kid he takes under his wing, Gary is wearing a 16 Candles t-shirt. For some reason. 16 Candles is a film about Molly Ringwald’s pants. Nicolas Cage isn’t in it.

29 —It’s mentioned that Joe at one point served 29 months in prison for assaulting some police officers.

45 — Joe gives the kid 45 seconds to tell him why he should hire him.

48 — Joe is 48 years old.

THE RESULT

Nothing on the main ticket, only one number on the Lucky Dip ticket I won last time. So basically only watch Joe if you want to see a load of miserable stuff happen for no reason.

NEXT TIME ON NICOLAS CAGE:

Rage