Joe

**Spoiler Alert**

David Gordon Green Dir. Starring: Nicolas Cage and Tye Sheridan.

Joe is so gritty one could easily mistake the images and setting for a documentary in its depiction of those existing marginally in the ever-expanding numbers of the destitute and poor.

David Gordon Green is not a director to shy away from that world; having explored it in films like George Washington and Prince Avalanche. Nicolas Cage summons his acting jinn for a refreshing change and he performs capably as an ex-con who leads a crew hired to poison trees for a private residence to make room for more "useful" trees. Joe's situation is only slightly better than those who work under him; he drives a shabby truck and spends his days either patronizing a local brothel, (which must be the most forlorn whorehouse I've ever seen in a movie), hanging his head in a local bar, or numbing his senses with senseless T.V.

His life becomes more complicated when a 15-year-old boy named Gary (Tye Sheridan) applies for a job on his crew. Joe discovers Gary's father Wade (Gary Poulter) is an abusive drunk who spends all and any available money on drink when he isn't beating Gary. Proving himself more than able for the job, Gary is hired but before long brings his father along, who manages to sow discord and get himself dismissed from the crew.

I have to say that Green found an unknown marvel in Gary Poulter; an Austin homeless man, who died tragically on the streets after filming concluded. His appearance and performance are so real he almost steals the film from Cage and Sheridan.

Joe also has to deal with a local bottom-dweller who shows up one day in his yard armed with a gun, with which he shoots Joe; wounding him. Joe recovers, becoming a sort of surrogate dad to Gary. Joe also has to resist the impulse to keep Wade from beating Gary to death. Eventually Joe runs afoul of the police, the town scumbag, and even Wade. It isn't long before Wade and scumbag join forces in a kill-Joe plot.

Green's film doesn't allow the characters relief or an escape from crushing poverty, thereby resisting sentimentality or a phony string of contrivances. He maintains a kind of a grim intensity throughout; tension building to a violent conclusion.

Cage and Sheridan are terrific but it is Poulter who is a revelation. He is frightening, sad and is full of contradictions. In one scene, Poulter follows a fellow drunkard to his hangout, hoping to share his wine but he instead strikes the man with a metal object; smashing his head; killing him. Afterward, he holds the man's head in his hands to kiss him in a strange act of empathy. The act is oddly beautiful; a gesture of love wed to an act of appalling violence. It is also strange that Poulter shares a tragic link to his character; a life imitating art coincidence.

A showdown between the principle characters comes to pass near the end of the film; a violent denouement that seems to be an inevitable end for denizens of an impoverished, violent environment. I liked the grit and grime of the film and Green's insistence we see this world; immersing us in a place most people would like to forget exists in America. Joe isn't a great film, but its raw look and feel, and its affecting performances, won't leave one's thoughts immediately after viewing.