Joe

1970 "Keep America beautiful."
6.8| 1h47m| R| en
Details

Ad executive Bill Compton confronts and murders his daughter's drug-dealing boyfriend. Wandering into a local bar, Bill encounters a drunken, bigoted factory worker with a bloodlust, Joe Curran. When Bill confesses the murder to Joe, the two strike up an uneasy alliance, leading to a wild adventure.

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The Cannon Group

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Reviews

VividSimon Simply Perfect
FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.
FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Mark Turner I can remember when the movie JOE came out. I was 13 at the time and fueled by the counter culture movement that all of us in our pre-teens and teens were involved in. We all though the clothing and choices we made were our own and not part of some systemic norm we would be forced to take part in. Little did everyone realize that by assuming the same clothing, same attitudes and same quotes we were doing little more than every generation before us by revolting against our elders. It wasn't something new and it wasn't something individual. It was just something different.JOE take those differences and adds the twist of violence to the story. It opens with a young couple Frank (Patrick McDermott) is a drug dealer in the seedier side of New York City. Melissa (Susan Sarandon) is a spoiled daughter of a successful white collar couple who has fallen from Frank. The two feed off of one another, Frank the attention he gets and Melissa the love she thinks she has for him. After Frank gives Melissa some pills while they're out before heading off to sell drugs, she trips out in a drugstore whose owner calls the EMS to take her to a hospital.Melissa's parents Bill (Dennis Patrick) and Joan (Audrey Caire) show up and plan on taking her home once she's released. Bill goes to her apartment to pick up her things when he runs into Frank. His disdain for Frank is on full display and Frank goads him on insulting him and his family. In response Bill attacks him and in the process accidentally kills him. Leaving behind a few of his drugs and taking the rest to dispose of he leaves the building and heads to the nearest bar for a drink.It is at the bar he chooses that he runs into Joe (Peter Boyle). Joe is a blue collar worker and stereotypical of those at the time. He hates taxes, his kids, blacks, foreigners and hippies equally. He talks non-stop about all of them and how much he hates them to the chagrin of the bar owner. When he says he wishes he could kill a hippie Bill responds with "I just did". Joe looks at him to see how serious he was and then the two laugh thinking it was all a joke.The next night Joe sees the news talking about the death of Frank and the search for the killer. Realizing Bill was telling the truth he calls him and wants to meet. Joe has no intention of blackmailing Bill. Instead he thinks of them as kindred spirits, brothers in arms and a friend, something we get the impression he has none of. The pair drink and talk and Bill loosens up deciding he likes this breath of fresh air unlike the backstabbing suck ups he works with in advertising.Joe invites Bill and his wife to dinner and Bill accepts. It goes smoothly but the man on edge at all times is Joe. He seems ready to jump at any moment. When they finish eating he takes Bill downstairs to show him his gun collection. He calls Joan down and attempts to calm her down and tell her she has nothing to worry about.But worry she will when Melissa escapes from the hospital after finding out Frank is dead. Overhearing a conversation between her parents when they return home from their dinner, she now knows who killed Frank and runs away.Joe contacts Bill to ask where he's been to find that Bill has been combing the streets searching for Melissa. Offering to help the pair take to the seedier side of NYC and begin their search. Their journey through the coffee houses and macrobiotic restaurants where they're ridiculed by the hippies leads them to a group that makes fun of them. Learning Bill has drugs their attitude changes.The unlikely group parties and gets wasted, has sex and then part of them take off with the drugs. Joe forces one of the remaining girls to tell them where they went and she lets them know. Guns in his trunk he and Bill head out to find them and get back the drugs and discover what happened to Melissa.This may seem like a lengthy synopsis filled with potential spoilers but not really. It provides the bare bones but not the meat that is wrapped around them. The story itself holds your attention and the performances on hand, especially by that of Boyle (a breakout performance it turns out) make this movie one that holds your attention, even if he doesn't show until 30 minutes or so in.Made in 1970 what makes the movie even more interesting is looking back on the story and the culture war going on at the time. The movie depicts three separate categories of people here who all seem more alike than different. Bill and Joan represent the white collar workers, Joe the blue collar and Melissa and her friends the hippy generation. Where the hippies claim individuality and independence they show none of it, all dressing alike, using the same comments and buying products to make be part of the group. It's the same thing that people like Bill are hired to promote and make money from. Looking back we can see that now and realize it better than at the time the movie was released.All three feel trapped in their own environments. Bill by the boring mundane life he must work to live the lifestyle he's chosen, Joe in the daily grind working at the steel mill and feeling trapped by people who have more while doing less and Melissa and her friends who work just as hard selling drugs in order to pay for the things they want. None of the three groups realizes they are the same as each claims only theirs is the real thing.When the movie was released it was considered quite controversial. It drew a lot of attention and discussion among movie goers. Some saw Joe as a hero and others as a villain. In truth he is both. But he is also us, the everyman out there. The movie was also a pivotal film for its director John G. Avildsen who three years later directed the critically acclaimed SAVE THE TIGER which won Jack Lemmon an Oscar for best actor and who six years later directed a small film called ROCKY.The film is being released on blu-ray by Olive Films so fans can now have the cleanest looking copy of it they've ever had the chance to own. Extras are limited to the trailer but it's the movie itself that is worth picking a copy of this up for. By the time the screen credits roll you'll be stunned, you'll be thinking about what group you fit in and you'll realize how talented an actor Boyle actually was.
poe-48833 JOE isn't "dated;" it's Timely. Again. In mere days, we'll have our first unabashedly Libertarian president (and anyone who doesn't know what that means, look up the Libertarian manifesto). The Free Poor of this country (once called "the Middle Class" before being decimated by both Democratic AND Republican policies) are overdosing on heroin in record numbers; walled-in, gated "communities" abut slum tenement housing the country over; gun violence continues unabated, with an average of one mass shooting (a shooting in which four or more people are shot) a day. And it's now Official: The Electoral Integrity Project, which assesses so-called "democracies" around the world, has concluded that North Carolina is "no longer a functioning democracy." (Due, in part, we're told, to rampant gerrymandering, voter suppression, and outright power grabs. That's "racketeering," to those who still believe in the Old Laws...) JOE tapped into a lot of this way back in 1970- especially the age-old Hatreds that have kept the Species from uniting the Races. F--- 'em. I'm going to sit back and listen to some Kitaro and some Terry Oldfield and some Steven Halpern and some R. Carlos Nakai and dream of Better Days...
LeonLouisRicci A Film that could be Made Today with Slight Variations. The Power of this Product, Tapping into the Zeitgeist of the Late Sixties, Few Films Exhibit the Realism of Character and Setting so Profoundly and Accurately.Herman Wexler's Script is Excellent and Peter Boyle's "Joe" was so Realistic and Disturbing, as is the whole Production, that the Movie was Rejected by the Public's Consciousness and the Emotional Pain it Caused and Pushed it to the Fringes in some sort of "Denial" akin to Trauma, Blotted Out for Self Preservation.The Movie is Surprisingly Minimalist in Style, Drawing its Power from the Great Acting all around with Characters that Literally Come Alive on the Screen.Timeless in its Message of Social/Economic/Political Divide, it is a Chilling "Bad Trip". Once Seen, cannot be Forgotten. To call this Dated is Absolutely Inaccurate.Mesmerizing Low-Budget Movie that Hits all the Right Notes, even the Music is Contemporaneously "Right On" and not Cringe Inducing like most Hollywood Productions of the Time that were Clueless.This Great Film is the Closest You can get to Time Travel and Places the Viewer in 1970 America with Verisimilitude. No Easy Task. One of the Best Films to Capture the Ugliness that was this Time when it was "Changing".Note...Susan Sarandon's Film Debut.
Scott LeBrun The 1970 classic "Joe" owes a lot to the performances of its leading actors, especially Peter Boyle in his star-making turn in the title role. Joe is a blue collar bigot; he's actually pretty democratic about it, as he seems to hate all those who are "different" equally. He makes the acquaintance of Bill Compton (Dennis Patrick), a well-off advertising executive who's just accidentally killed the drug pushing boyfriend (Patrick McDermott) of his young daughter Melissa (Susan Sarandon, in her film debut). Joe figures out that Bill is a killer, but even armed with this knowledge, he doesn't exactly blackmail Bill. Rather, he thinks he's found a kindred spirit, somebody who despises hippies as much as he does. The result is an uneasy sort of relationship that forms the crux of the movie, as it develops. Bill isn't as angry a man as Joe, but he does find him to be an interesting individual.The way that a few separate worlds, and worldviews, collide, makes for good entertainment in this effort from screenwriter Norman Wexler and director John G. Avildsen. The generation gap provides further conflict, and seeing Joe and Bill eventually immerse themselves in the hippie universe is no less than fascinating. (The two of them do so as a means of searching for Melissa, who's run away.) They try to prove to each other how well they can adapt to this kind of lifestyle, including taking hits from a bong. Naturally, it isn't long before Joe is reminded of just how much he loathes hippies when he and Bill are robbed, and he spurs the increasingly distressed Bill on to a violent revenge - and a devastating conclusion.Described in many reviews here as an even more volatile version of Archie Bunker, Boyles' Joe is a true force of nature, and the actor is so good in the role that he basically makes the movie. The other actors (such as Audrey Caire as Bills' wife and K. Callan as Joes' wife) are fine, and Boyle and Patrick do work well together.A film very much of its time, "Joe" is a well paced drama that is definitely worth a viewing. It's likely to stick in peoples' minds after it's over.Eight out of 10.