EIFF 2014: Joe

With Joe, director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express, Prince Avalanche) returns to his roots, examining the grim reality of society’s underclass with great sympathy and unflinching honesty and humanity. The result is his best film in years – post-screening, you can very nearly shake the grit from your shoes as you leave the cinema.

As the titular grizzled antihero, a subdued, marble-mouthed Cage fights his violence-prone nature as he attempts to lead a ‘respectable’ existence (poisoning perfectly healthy trees so a developer can cut them down) until a homeless teenager (Mud’s Sheridan) arrives on the scene with his abusive drunk of a father in tow. With its Southern Gothic milieu and moody, noir-ish tone of understated menace, at times Joe feels as pulpy as its poisoned trees. But Green brings a delicate, richly detailed touch to a story that could have felt pat. Instead, it’s potently ambivalent. Joe may be a rabid cur at heart, but at least he has heart enough to have a dog in the fight. [Michelle Devereaux]