Joe

The paths of Nicolas Cage and writer-director David Gordon Green couldn’t have crossed at a better time for either of them. Cage’s resume of late has been the very definition of haphazard, with cheesy cash-grabs seemingly taking precedence over cool collaborations (to his credit, the actor has never just phoned in his performances). And while Green still has a bit of credibility, the one-two punch of his failed ‘mainstream’ comedies The Sitter (strangely compelling in parts) and Your Highness (nope, still terrible) had seemingly dulled his edge. A mutual stab at career rehab was just the ticket for both, and they found it in the spare, hypnotic and compelling drama Joe.

Cage plays the title character, a charismatic labourer with a fondness for booze and a hair-trigger temper. His faults notwithstanding, Joe is a stand-up guy, and he quickly becomes a father figure to Gary (Tye Sheridan, the talented young scrapper from Mud and The Tree Of Life), who needs a better parental influence than the monstrous, drunken Wade (the late Gary Poulter, terrifyingly convincing), who steals Gary’s money and beats him when he objects. Joe is trying to walk the straight and narrow after a chequered past... but walking away from trouble just isn’t in his nature either.

Green pulls off the admirable feat of presenting Joe’s hardscrabble rural landscape and its inhabitants as both familiar and foreign, making the movie thoroughly compelling as a result, and Cage manages an equally neat trick, tamping down his characteristic wildness and weirdness in favour of slow-fuse stillness but revealing unsettling hints of the mad man within. It’s a tremendous performance in an excellent film.