Killer Joe Reviews
Top CriticIf you like your movies filled with twisted humor, sexual perversion, psychological intimidation and sudden violence, "Killer Joe" is the flick for you.
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| Original Score: B
You will either love "Killer Joe" or run away screaming. I absorbed this NC-17 nail bomb with awestruck admiration.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
[Friedkin] has retained his touch ... all these years later. And in Matthew McConaughey, he has the perfect vehicle for madness.
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| Original Score: 4/5
You end up feeling sorry for all the actors forced to humiliate themselves, except for McConaughey, whose portrayal of sadistic, manipulative evil is mesmerizing.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The movie frequently clicks as a sendup of over-the-top film-noir storytelling.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
If y'all like your comedy with a Lone Star drawl and as black as Texas tea, then by all means tuck right into Killer Joe.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
In the immortal words of Wayne's World: "You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hurl."
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| Original Score: 4/4
Killer Joe is twisted pulp, and the actors chew on it bravely, boldly, and with varying degrees of success.
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| Original Score: 3/4
A gleeful and unapologetic descent into delicious decadence, Killer Joe is proud of what it is and never tries to be something it isn't.
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| Original Score: 3/4
That everything should go wrong is no surprise, but the wrong turns are taken so viciously -- Gershon, in particular, is appallingly treated, in closeup -- that they lead the film, adapted from the play by Tracy Letts, to the brink of abusive farce.
Like a deep-fried Twinkie at the State Fair of Texas, Killer Joe is gooey, flavorful and bad for you. Dig in.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
The action and dialogue find the same squalid level in time for the climactic scene, the cruel humiliation of a central character.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
Out of the muck and mire of human depravity that is "Killer Joe," something magnificent comes: a killer performance by Matthew McConaughey.
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| Original Score: 3/5
It is a tale of white trash immorality on a grand scale, of people who are ridiculous and yet dangerous, laughable but cunning, and really stupid ... yet sneaky.
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| Original Score: 3/4
The bone-crunchingly violent film has luridly entertaining moments. But by its resolution, this sleazy Southern Gothic nightmare has simply gone off the rails.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The film harks back to the low-budget chamber pieces of Friedkin's early career, and he creates a perfect storm of montage and character interplay within a confined space, which culminates in a disturbing loss of humanity.
"Killer Joe" is one hell of a movie. It left me speechless. I can't say I loved it. I can't say I hated it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Friedkin make no attempt to soften the characters' monstrousness, and thank hell for that. This is rave and rage and purge acting.
Like a deep-fried Twinkie at the State Fair of Texas, ''Killer Joe'' is gooey, flavorful and bad for you. Dig in.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
There are no characters here, and no drama. It's just a county fair sideshow attraction - 100 minutes of Shoot the Geek.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
Plot twists that might have played as clever onstage feel false on screen, and while the individual actors are all gifted (if in some cases miscast), they never really come together as an ensemble.
A sleazy and pointless film about sleazy and pointless people, "Killer Joe" reminds us that what Quentin Tarantino does isn't easy.
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| Original Score: 0.5/4
"Killer Joe" is, at bottom-and I mean bottom-ugly and vile, not to mention dumb and clumsy.
As a sadistic dallas cop who moonlights as a hit man, Matthew McConaughey is on fire in Killer Joe, fierce and ferociously funny.
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| Original Score: 3/4
One of the three best performances of McConaughey's career.
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| Original Score: 4.5/5
Lurches from realism to corn-pone absurdism and exploitation-cinema surrealism.
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| Original Score: 2.5/5
"Killer Joe" offers us a sneering image of trailer-park Texas, in which everyone is stupid and amoral and trashier than their cluttered front yards.
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| Original Score: 1/5
Friedkin's still got it - the "it" being his ability to infuse every frame of the film with powerful ambiguity and doubt, and also his ability to attract terrific actors and propel them in unexpected directions.
Throws down a dare by expecting its audience to be the cool connoisseurs of the story's "comic" outrageousness, then rubbing viewers' faces in close-up scenes of brutality that reasonable people ought not to be able to watch.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
It sends you home reeling, but wondering what the point of it was, and why so many worthwhile people bothered to do it in the first place.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Friedkin, a son of Chicago's working-class South Side who has swerved back and forth over the thin blue line of order and chaos throughout his career, is a fine fit to the material.
Friedkin's direction is rough and ready, but Letts's tangy writing is the star here.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
McConaughey's fans might be shocked to see him in this role - more likely, they'd skip the opportunity - but they ought to give his performance a shot.
Enjoyably cynical, blood-spattered noir-comedy elicits more laughs than thrills.
