Playwright Tracy Letts will have his name (I assumed this “Tracy” was a woman until recently, due to the gender neutral name that skews to the feminine) in brighter lights next year, when TWC delivers his film adaptation of his popular play August: Osage County starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts next Fall. He was also responsible for Bug, both the play and movie. The lesser known Killer Joe was also a play and released as a film a few months ago. It stars Matthew McConaughey highlighted in an untraditionally villainous role. Now, I haven’t masked by mild dislike of the actor. While I thought he was perfectly cast as the creepy twentysomething skeezing on high school girls in the modern classic pot comedy Dazed & Confused, what followed was nearly two decades of some lackluster performances and coasting on his good looks and charm. He built a resume from mostly riding on the popularity of his female costars (Sandra Bullock, Jodie Foster, Jennifer Lopez). I suppose that he gets partial credit for How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, seeing how studios paired him again with Kate Hudson, hoping they’d find another pot at the end of the rainbow, but only found Fool’s Gold. But his rom-com mojo was still risky, as Failure to Launch opposite Sarah Jessica Parker couldn’t be repeated (Parker was still working with Sex and the City good will) with Ghost of Girlfriends Past or big-budget stinkers Sahara and Oscar-grab We Are Marshall. His presence is fairly non-existent and/or negligible in his more prestigious opportunities (La Amistad) and lead roles (EDtv) which he has been afforded. A lot of my lady friends think he’s hotness on a stick, but his sex appeal is strangely lost on me. However, recently, there has been a mild turn in his career. In the late aught's, he settled down with his Brazilian partner Camila Alves and began having children, and whether by coincidence or natural progression, he began taking on more interesting roles. Generally, family life drives actors to make more kid-friendly entertainment. Here, the opposite seems to be occurring After a cameo in the entertaining Tropic Thunder, he took on a high-profile lead as a morally ambiguous attorney in The Lincoln Lawyer, which ended up being a hit. There wasn’t anything special going on compared to McConaughey’s other choices, but the movie itself represented transition to a new direction for his career. His character trades on his success and attractiveness, but there was also a light swarm that has been missing since Richard Linklater’s Dazed, which bled right into supporting roles with his memorable stripping nightclub owner Dallas in Magic Mike and, now, the little seen Killer Joe. After reuniting with Linklater in Bernie, he has also taken a page out of Nicole Kidman’s book and worked with choice directors (and her) like Lee Daniels (The Paperboy) and Take Shelter’s Jeff Nichols (Mud), both films showed at Cannes 2012. Next year, audiences will see him in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. He has a pilot on deck with fellow Texan actor and EDtv costar Woody Harrelson (True Detectives). Of course, he may also work on more dubious projects like Simon West’s Thunder Run and preparing for Oscar bait like Jean-Marc Vallée’s The Dallas Buyer’s Club. I still don’t care much for McConaughey, but, after Magic Mike, his recent choices, and (most of) his future prospects, he’s starting to turn my opinion.
Capsule Review
I wasn’t too keen on Killer Joe, which I saw a few months ago. McConaughey plays the title hired assassin, whose daytime job is cop. He gets involved in the thick of a family’s sordid baggage and a murder plot. Entertaining at times, the pulpy story drags until the climatic scene, that is so well directed by veteran William Friedkin, it’s almost worth the price of admission. There’s some questionable envelope-pushing and the acting is sometimes a mess, but the finale packs a punch. And the make-up is distractingly awful.
(please go easy on me; I wrote this more than a month after I saw the movie from chicken-scratch notes written in a darkened movie theater)
There are sounds of gun cocking and thunder set against a rainstorm, before Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch) bangs on the trailer of his father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), asking for his sister Dottie (Juno Temple). He’s in need of some fast money to pay off a debt and when he turns up short, he turns to Killer Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and hatches the idea to have him off his mother for the life insurance money. Chris is under the belief the proceeds will benefit his sister, with whom he assumes will help pay off his creditors. Dottie sleepwalks and Chris has nightmares. The next day Joe hits on the underage Dottie and they begin having some really hot sex. The thug Chris owes money to, G-Man (Danny Epper), has him beat within an inch of his life. When Chris has a change of heart about his plan, Joe shows him the dead body of his mother in the back of his trunk. He places her in the front seat, douses her with alcohol, and sets her on fire. Ansel and his wife Sharla (Gina Gershon) meet with a lawyer and find out that the sole beneficiary of his ex-wife’s life insurance policy is her boyfriend Rex (Sean O’Hara). A desperate Chris attempts to convince Dottie to run away with him; he also buys a gun. Joe, who is an officer of the law, uses his position to pull Rex over and take the check.
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| Gina Gershon isn't aware yet of the shame in store for her |
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