(No spoilers)


Source: Wikipedia 

'I dont know who I am, but I know what keeps me alive, keeps me out of jail, keeps me from hurting people, do as I'm told. What's the point in any of it? Its all gonna boil up and wash us away'

After all the hype surrounding the movie and the long build up of nearly two years at this point, we finally get to see Joe and its just sort of appeared without anyone really paying attention to it. Joe boasts an incredible performance from Nicolas Cage that pretty much holds everything else together to ensure us that we are witnessing a truly great experience. I say experience because this is not your average movie at all. 

Everything in this movie is told in such an awkward and precise way that it feels like David Lynch made it. The movie is simple enough but there's just enough going on in each scene to linger in your mind, to which it has done, I saw this movie while I was on holiday and saw about 5 or 6 movies in that time and this is the only one I thought about, it just lingered in my mind. Was it the movie I thought it was going to be? Not at all and I doubt it will be what anyone here expects either, unless you've read the book of course.  

Source: Rotten Tomatoes

Perhaps I am overanalyzing it all but this definitely is not a movie you sit down with one evening and just watch and go to bed. I was tired when the movie finished, it was about midnight and I couldn't sleep for awhile because I was still thinking about it and jotting down all the little things I could remember but even with this note taking I found it very difficult to write anything about this movie, specifically the plot, because very little happens in it at all, I am not going to spoil anything but its not a conventional story of A to B to C. 

Something that I can very easily write about however is the acting and oh my was it good. Nicolas Cage was fantastic! Just like everyone has already said, he knocks it out of the park and he totally embodies Joe and everything about him, his thoughts, his feelings, his little nuances like shaking his hands or rolling his eyes, he is Joe. His accent is also quite amazing, every movie he's been in where he has a southern accent which is a few at this point, they all sound different from each other... How do you even do that? That is the power that is Nicolas Cage. Nobody else could have done this character any better. It's a role made for him. Everyone else did fine jobs too, most of the cast actually were just regular people and not actors and they all did well especially the drunk dad. Everyone in the film had a personality and thats quite hard to pull off when a character maybe has a minute of screen time. Joe's employees, for example, were really good and made me laugh a few times, probably because they were friends in real life so the chemistry was there and it helps to the authenticity of it all. We don't know a lot about them but we don't need to, they were in this world before we entered and will be there after we leave it all we need to know is that they're real people.

source: cineplex

That's a complaint I have seen from some people which I do not agree with. People think that the fact we do not know a lot about Joe means its a bad movie or that he is a bad character. We don't know much about Joe but we know enough to keep the movie rolling and over time we learn more little by little, again the movie is trying to be like real life, we just see a bit of the lives of these characters and we leave. Joe is a deep character with a rich background, he's done bad things, some of which we know and some that we don't. That is also another great thing about the movie and makes it hard to believe that this was actually a book because not unlike Bangkok Dangerous very little of this movie needs an explanation all the time, sometimes the atmosphere is enough to tell the story of a certain scene, sometimes people just look at each other and more is said than any words ever could.

Thats something this movie has a plentiful amount of; atmosphere and perhaps it has a bit too much? Not a lot happens in the movie at all, its very slow and like I said it's told in such a precise way that it might alienate a huge chunk of people and its not like this movie has mass appeal to begin with, not that it makes the movie bad but it's still a point to bring up. After about 30 minutes something happens to Joe and that is where I thought the movie was pick up but, no, it didn't, the movie was tense for that scene and then it just kind of trailed off, with that subplot not coming up again for a good 45 minutes. That is what this movie is like really; a scene happens, it ends and we move on and it also seems like some scenes are played out of order too. The western-esqe finale was a good one because it fits with the rest of the movie and really fits in with the tone. Speaking of tone this movie has a very dark one and the atmosphere, like I have mentioned, is very strong. It's up to you to decide whether or not Joe is a good person or not but there was just a feeling I had inside of me while I watched this, some of the things Joe does you just scream at the screen and say 'No! Don't do that!' If anyone here has seen Crazy Heart, its a little like that. 

source: cbsnews1.com

Maybe it sounds like I did not like the movie very much and that is not true, I just enjoyed it in the way I was supposed to, I sat there, I absorbed and I thought about it. I was never bored but I just have a lot of thoughts about it. On the one hand you could argue nothing happened but on the other hand its the little nuances the filmmakers give to each scene that make that scene work and anything involving a police car is gold. It is a good movie don't get me wrong, its very original and I'm going to have to think about it all over again when I inevitably buy it on DVD. However, I'm not going to rate this movie because it's not as simple as just giving it a numerical score out of five. 

I hope you enjoyed reading  It is going to be hard to discuss the movie right now though, not a lot of you have seen it yet