REVIEW - KILLER JOE

I enjoy all good films, even if I don't particularly have 'fun' watching them. Killer Joe is a film to be enjoyed. It is thorough and vivid in almost all aspects of its form, it establishes ideas and follows them through to completion (some may feel that it goes even further than that). I suppose this isn't especially difficult with material such as Tracy Letts' screenplay - from his stage play - which is as crude and shallow as an episode of South Park, only much more cruel, but it is most satisfying to behold. Letts and William Friedkin are indulging us in ways familiar to us, only not quite to this extent. Other films might toy with the notion of making us laugh and retch simultaneously; Killer Joe makes you laugh wholeheartedly, even while watching a corrupt police officer sexually humiliating a married couple in a caravan. Indeed, thus, it doesn't just make you laugh, it lets you laugh. This is an opportunity to revel in this bad taste and depravity (a sign that the producers endorse this is their refusal to cut the film for an R rating in the US - they've accepted their delightfully brutal NC-17), and if you're even slightly reluctant to take this opportunity up, you'll only feel sick watching this film. But you certainly won't feel bored. Cinematography is appropriately lurid; the heat and grime is palpable. Performances are quite brilliant and as unsubtle as everything else on screen. The only thing this film didn't satisfy for me was my hunger - boy do I want a KFC...