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I’m a big fan of Tracy Letts’s stage work, so I’m always happy to see another of his plays hit the big screen. The first, for reference, was Bug, which featured Michael Shannon and a suspiciously-good Ashley Judd and was directed by William Friedkin. Clearly, Friedkin couldn’t get enough of the messed-up characters Letts writes so well, so he decided to dip back in and make Killer Joe, a tale about a young Texas boy on the run from a drug lord that turns to a psychotic cop/hitman to help him murder his mother to collect on the life insurance.
Geoff saw the film back at SXSW, and he thought it was an ok movie, supported by an amazing performance from Matthew McConaughey. This might be one of my most anticipated films of the post-Batman and Prometheus portion of the year. It’s also a rare NC-17 theatrical release, so you’re not likely to find this one at your neighborhood AMC. Let me tell you, from what I know of how this story shakes out, it’s going to earn that NC-17.