LD Entertainment
As a cop, a profession that exudes Mars-infused energy, Killer Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) uses firepower to protect the community in his redneck Texan town. As a part-time hit man – a Mars-Pluto combo – Killer Joe turns families’ murderous fantasies into reality. The Smiths are one of those twisted clans.
Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch), in dire need of cash to pay off some loan sharks, concocts a plan to kill his mother. Mom has an insurance policy with Dottie Smith (Juno Temple) – Chris’s sister – as beneficiary. Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), Chris’s father, has no problems rubbing out his ex-wife. Sounds like a good solution to resolving the debt problem. So they call in Killer Joe to (literally) execute.
Turns out Killer Joe – the movie is based on Tracy Letts’s identically named stage play – is even more diabolically Plutonic than the Smiths. Icily controlling and meticulous, the assassin exacts a bizarre financial “retainer” in the form of Dottie, thereby blurring the line between family – the Moon’s domain – and Plutonic blood money. And is the hit man’s true intention simply to create a deranged family of his own?
Familial bonds – so strong that only death can break or, in this case, create them – is under the microscope in this violent foul-language of a movie. And who better to direct it than William “The Exorcist” Friedkin, who intimately knows about the devil paying visits to unsuspecting bodies.
Rating: ☽♂♇ (Moon/Mars/Pluto)
