Category Archives: Cop on the Edge

Con Game, Cop on the Edge, On Politics, True Crime

Who is America? – BlacKkKlansman (****)

August 20, 2018 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on August 18, 2018)

“I-I am going to be a storm-a flame-
I need to fight whole armies alone;
I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms;
I feel too strong to war with mortals-
BRING ME GIANTS!”

-Edmond Rostand, from Cyrano de Bergerac

[To two members of the KKK, while pretending to capture Bart]

Jim: Oh, boys! Lookee what I got heyuh.

Bart: Hey, where are the white women at?

-from Blazing Saddles; screenplay by Mel Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, and Alan Uger

To bring in something, such as a fish, by winding up the line on a reel.

-from The Free Dictionary definition of the phrase “reel something in”

So what do you get if you cross Cyrano de Bergerac with Blazing Saddles? You might get Spike Lee’s new joint, Black KkKlansman. That is not to say that Lee’s film is a knee-slapping comedy; far from it. It does contain laughs, but there is nothing funny about some of the reaction it has sparked after only a week. From an Indie Wire article:

[Actor] Topher Grace contacted police after receiving a threatening phone call reacting to his role as former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke in Spike Lee’s “Black KkKlansman”. According to reports (via TMZ) Grace told police that someone called him over the phone and referred to him using a gay slur. The mystery caller also warned Grace that his role as Duke would “ruin race relations in America.” […] Grace reportedly described the caller as “aggressive” and “angry.”

Speaking of “race relations in America”, here’s something even less amusing. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are 917 hate groups currently operating in the U.S. And (to paraphrase Gimli the dwarf) it gets even better! If you go to the SPLC website and click the “100 Days in Trump’s America” report, there’s lots of fun facts:

As he spoke to the nation on Jan.20 [2016], President Donald Trump reminded white nationalists why they had invested so much hope in him as their champion and redeemer. He painted a bleak picture of America: a nation of crumbling, third-world infrastructure, “rusted-out factories,” leaky borders, inner cities wallowing in poverty, a depleted military and a feckless political class that prospered as the country fell into ruin. He promised an “America First” policy that would turn it all around. […]

Despite his failure to achieve any major legislative victories, Trump has not disappointed his alt-right followers. His actions suggest that – unlike the economic populism of his campaign – Trump’s appeals to the radical right did indeed presage his White House agenda. On Jan. 31 [2016], former Klan leader David Duke tweeted: “everything I’ve been talking about for decades is coming true and the ideas I’ve fought for have won.”

Well fuck me. There’s that fine fellow David Duke popping up again! When Mr. Wizard Tweeted he’d been “talking about” certain ideas “for decades” …he wasn’t exaggerating. The “David Duke” depicted in Lee’s film is the David Duke of the 1970s, right around the time he became the public face of the “National Association for the Advancement of White People”. This was also when he dropped the hood and robes for a suit-and-tie look.

True story. This window-dressing may have fooled some people, but it didn’t wash with Ron Stallworth (played by John David Washington), an African-American undercover cop who managed to infiltrate…and become a card-carrying member (!) of the KKK in Colorado in the early 70s. To address the obvious question, he didn’t crash a Klan rally and ask where all the white women were at, because 1) that would’ve gone over like a lead balloon with the goys in the hoods, and 2) again, Lee’s film is not a comedy (per se).

Stallworth ingratiated himself with the organization Cyrano style. He made them fall in love with him by proxy. The “Ron Stallworth” who wooed his local Klan by whispering sweet racist nothings over the phone was not the same “Ron Stallworth” who attended the meetings. That was Stallworth’s white surrogate, his Jewish undercover partner Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver). In other words, this was old school “catfishing”-if you will.

What ensues is the kind of story that frankly strains credulity…if it weren’t for the fact that this really happened (allowing for some creative license, naturally). Even Lee was skeptical at first, admitting in an interview that he did with Seth Meyers earlier this week:

“…when [co-producer] Jordan Peele pitched it to me, it was one of those very high-concept pitches. Six words: ‘Black man infiltrates Ku Klux Klan.’ […] I thought of [comedy sketches done by] Dave Chappelle, but [Peele] said ‘no’ and he sent me the book. I was very intrigued by it…it was in my wheelhouse.”

I think this is Lee’s most affecting and hard-hitting film since Do the Right Thing (1989). The screenplay (adapted by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Lee from Stallworth’s eponymous memoir) is equal parts biopic, docudrama, police procedural and social commentary, finding a nice balance of drama, humor and suspense. The cast is uniformly excellent. Washington (son of Denzel) and Driver have great chemistry, and Grace captures Duke’s smarminess to a tee. Other standouts include Robert Lee Burke, Laura Harrier, Ryan Eggold and a genuinely scary Jasper Paakkonen.

Lee is aware he’s preaching to the choir and will never reach a certain percentage of the “fine people” in America…sadly, the very ones who would benefit most from his counsel. And if someone were to call Lee’s approach heavy-handed, I wouldn’t disagree.

He opens with the iconic crane shot from Gone with the Wind that pans over hundreds of dead and wounded Confederate soldiers and resolves with the tattered stars and bars. He cross-cuts a solemn Klan initiation rite with a monologue by revered civil rights icon Harry Belafonte, playing a man sharing a horrifying eyewitness account of a particularly gruesome 1916 lynching. In case you’re still unable to connect the dots between the Stallworth story with Black Lives Matter and Charlottesville, he tacks on a timely denouement that jams to a screeching halt just inches away from slamming into “ta-da!”.

Yes, he ladles in on with a trowel. But you know what? The voices of reason in America are drowned out daily by the relentless clatter and din of Trump-fueled polarization and misdirection. He who shouts loudest wins (apparently). The hoods are off? Fine. I say more power to artists like Lee with something substantive to add to the conversation who feel they must (figuratively) bonk you over the head first to get your undivided attention.

Subtlety is prologue. Resist. Or get riled by seeing this film, immediately. Bring a friend.

Cop on the Edge, Family Issues, Mystery, Neo-Noir

Forgotten crimes: Memoir of a Murderer ½ & The Sinner *

September 11, 2017 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on September 9, 2107)

You know what they say: watch out for the quiet ones. Consider Byung-su (Kyung-gu Sul), a taciturn, 50-something veterinarian who enjoys a quiet, retiring life with his adult daughter Eun-hee (Seol-Hyun Kim). He is the central character of South Korean director Shin-yeon Won’s psychological crime thriller, Memoir of a Murderer (in theaters now).

The single, 20-something Eun-hee is concerned about dad, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. As inevitably occurs in the early stages, Byung-su is becoming forgetful, to the point where he keeps a mini-voice recorder with him so he can dictate reminders to himself. However, Alzheimer’s may be a blessing. There are certain things about his past he would just as soon forget all about-like the “career” he has “retired” from: serial killer.

Eun-hee is blissfully oblivious to her father’s macabre double life, which abruptly ceased 17 years previous, after Byung-su was involved in a serious car wreck. Whether or not the accident literally knocked him back to his senses is not made clear, but he decided then and there to end the killing spree and concentrate on being a loving father to his daughter, who he is raising as a single parent.

First-person flashbacks reveal that Byung-su’s murderous impulses may have been seeded in his childhood; he was frequently beaten senseless by his violently abusive father. Subsequently, when he becomes a serial murderer as a young adult, he targets those who are (to his determination as judge, jury, and executioner) abusers of all stripes. This is his self-justification; like television’s “Dexter” he feels he’s doing society a favor.

At any rate, that was the “old” Byung-su. Now, he wouldn’t harm a fly. Or would he? After several random murders with eerie similarities make local authorities suspect a new serial killer is on the prowl, Byung-su begins to fear that he himself could be the perpetrator (especially when he factors in his constant fuzziness from the Alzheimer’s). As if all of this weren’t enough to send him over the edge, he’s getting a disconcertingly “familiar” vibe from Eun-hee’s mysterious new boyfriend (Kim Nam-gil), a young cop.

Won’s film (adapted by Hwang Jo-yun and Won Shin-yun from Kim Young-ha’s novel A Murderer’s Guide to Memorization) recalls three other crime thrillers: Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000), Shohei Imamura’s Vengeance is Mine (1979), and Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder (2003); the former for its amnesiac, morally ambiguous protagonist, and the latter two for finding the humanity in otherwise repugnant characters.

That is not to say that this film is necessarily in the same class as the aforementioned. The premise is clever, leading man Sul has a brooding presence, and Choi Young-hwan’s atmospheric cinematography sustains a suitably nightmarish mood…but it gets bogged down by jarring tonal shifts; attempts at injecting humor become distracting, and you get a feeling Won wasn’t quite sure how to end his film. Still, it’s perfectly serviceable for dedicated fans of twisty crime thrillers…among whose company I can usually be found.

Speaking of twisty crime thrillers, if you don’t feel up to schlepping to the multiplex this weekend to overspend on a bucket of popcorn, you might have a summer TV sleeper in your on-demand queue, begging for a “catch-up” binge-watch. It’s USA Network’s limited series The Sinner, currently 6 installments into its 8-episode run.

Starring Jessica Biel (who also serves as an executive producer), it’s a deliriously lurid Zalman King-meets-Stephen King psychological mystery thriller (with a dash of Hitchcock tossed in for giggles). Here, Biel is the “quiet one” you need to watch out for.

They certainly know how to grab your attention in the series opener. Hot young mom Cora (Biel), her handsome hubby (Christopher Abbott, who you may recognize from HBO’s Girls) and their toddler son are enjoying a lovely sunny day at a crowded beach, when Cora espies a nearby group of young singles who are cranking the tunes and having a grand old time. When Cora suddenly leaps up without a word, purposely strides into their midst, and proceeds to brutally stab one of the young men to death, no one is more surprised than she. Turns out this ain’t exactly a typical day at the beach after all.

With hundreds of witnesses to this shocking and grisly crime (committed in broad daylight), it seems an open-and-shut case. But that would be too easy (and besides, 7 episodes still remain). Cora isn’t helping her own case by essentially shrugging and saying “dunno” every time someone asks her the obvious question. While the D.A., police, and the public are already chanting “Lock her up! Lock her up!”…there is one soul intrigued enough by the fact that Cora has no previous criminal record to dive into her psyche and discover the trigger for this seemingly inexplicable act of violence.

He is detective Harry Ambrose (Bill Pullman, in an oddly mannered performance that grows on you). Socially-challenged Harry is a hot mess; he is on the outs with his wife, pursuing a passionless affair with a dominatrix,and fancies himself as a world-class arborist (he seems to doing a bit of a reprise of the eccentric detective character he played in Jake Kasdan’s 1998 mystery dramedy, The Zero Effect).

Not unlike the protagonist in Memoir of a Murderer, Cora gives us a glimpse, via first-person flashbacks, of a twisted family upbringing; including a perennially moribund, voyeuristic young sister (obsessed with pushing Cora to lose her virginity) and a creepy, bible-thumping mother (straight out of Carrie) who goes out of her way to make Cora feel that any of her misbehavior (real or imagined) is somehow responsible for fueling her sister’s chronic illness.

There are also elements of Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie; particularly in the dynamics that develop between Cora and Harry as they team up to unlock the repressed memories that are feeding her P.T.S.D. symptoms. Toss in some Red Shoe Diaries-worthy soft-core titillation, and you’ve got yourself some must-see TV. Pass the popcorn.

Cop on the Edge, Documentary, Politics, True Crime

SIFF 2017: The Force ***

May 22, 2017 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 20, 2017)

Peter Nicks’ documentary examines the rocky relationship between Oakland’s police department and its communities of color. The force has been under federal oversight since 2002, due to myriad misconduct cases. Nicks utilizes the same cinema verite techniques that made his film The Waiting Room so compelling (my review). It’s like a real-life Joseph Wambaugh novel (The Choirboys comes to mind). The film offers no easy answers-but delivers an intimate, insightful glimpse at both sides.

Action, Art world, Cop on the Edge, Neo-Noir

Blu-ray reissue: To Live and Die in L.A. ****

December 5, 2016 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on December 3, 2016)

To Live and Die in L.A. Collector’s Edition Shout! Factory Blu-ray

Essentially a remake of The French Connection (updated for the 80s), this fast-moving, tough-as-nails neo noir from director William Friedkin ignites the senses on every level: visual, aural and visceral.

Leads William Peterson (as an obsessed treasury agent) and Willem Dafoe (as his criminal nemesis) rip up the screen with star-making performances (both were relative unknowns). While the narrative adheres to familiar “cop on the edge” tropes, there’s an undercurrent of weirdness throughout that makes this a truly unique genre entry (“The stars are God’s eyes!” Peterson’s girlfriend shrieks at him at one point, for no apparent reason). Friedkin co-adapted the screenplay with source novel author Gerald Petievich.

Friedkin’s hard-boiled L.A. story is painted in dusky orange, vivid reds and stark blacks; an ugly/beautiful noir Hell rendered by the late great cinematographer Robby Müller (who worked extensively with Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch). The icing on the cake is Wang Chung’s ace soundtrack, woven seamlessly into the narrative by Friedkin and editor M. Scott Smith.

Shout! Factory’s Blu-ray sports a print sourced from a new 4K scan that is a noticeable improvement over MGM’s from a couple years back, as well as new and archival interviews with cast, crew and composers.

Cop on the Edge, Documentary, True Crime

I’m placing me under arrest: The Seven-FIve ***

October 1, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 6, 2015)

Pretzels and beer. Soup and sandwich. New York City and police corruption. Some things seem to naturally go together. Not that police corruption is exclusive to the Big Apple, but there is something inherently cinematic about the combo. Serpico…based on a true story. The French Connection…based on a true story. Prince of the City…based on a true story. Cop Land, Bad Lieutenant…mmm, could happen (I think you get the gist).

The story in Tiller Russell’s riveting documentary, The Seven-Five, is not only true, but comes right from the mouths of the perps themselves. The “star” (for wont of a better term) of Russell’s film was once dubbed the “dirtiest cop” in the department’s history by NYC rags (and that’s saying a lot).

Michael Dowd headed up a posse of rogue cops who worked the 75^th Precinct. For a period stretching from the late 80s into the early 90s, they shook down Brooklyn drug dealers for protection money (among many other things). At the apex of his “career”, Dowd was basically holding down two full-time jobs, one as a cop, and one as a robber. As one of the interviewees observes, “Some cops end up becoming criminals; Michael Dowd was a criminal, who just happened to become a cop.”

When Dowd and his cohorts first popped onscreen, I became a little disoriented. I knew that this was billed as a “documentary”, but surely these were actors; they seemed too much in “character”. I mean, these guys could just as well have strolled right out of a Scorsese film (I could easily picture Dowd saying “Business bad? Fuck you. Pay me.”).

It’s easy to be bamboozled by Dowd’s…charm? But you have to delineate the colorful raconteur from the laundry list of misdeeds he so casually catalogs…he is by any definition a bad, bad man. At least former partner Ken Eurell displays something resembling a conscience (Eurell was a “good” cop…until he fell under sway of Dowd, who never was). Compelling yet disturbing, The Seven-Five tells an all-too-familiar tale that reflects a systemic blight that continues to fester in American cities large and small.

Cop on the Edge, Thriller

SIFF 2014: Monsoon Shootout **

September 19, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 17, 2014)

Amit Kumar directs this Bollywood crime thriller, a tale of an idealistic rookie Mumbai cop (Vijay Varma) eager to prove his mettle to his partner (Neeraj Kabi), a cynical and world-weary veteran. He gets his chance when he finds himself in a do-or-die face-off with a notoriously slippery assassin nicknamed “The Axe Man”. To shoot, or not to shoot…that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer through a drawn out court trial, or to take arms, blow this pain-in-the-ass recidivist away now and get a promotion. Perchance to dream…and that’s where the film takes a clunky turn into Run Lola Run/Point Blank territory. Ay, there’s the rub; pedestrian execution of its central conceit puts the damper on an otherwise stylish effort.

Cop on the Edge, Drama, Family Issues, Neo-Noir

Schenectady, NY: The Place Beyond the Pines ***

September 14, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 6, 2013)

It’s official. Ryan Gosling is the McQueen of his generation. He has already aced the Taciturn Pro Driver (in the 2011 film Drive) and now with this weekend’s opening of Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines, Gosling can add the Taciturn Pro Biker to his Steve cred.

Judging from the chorus of dreamy sighs that spontaneously erupted all about the auditorium when Gosling first appeared onscreen, perhaps “taciturn, ripped and tattooed” would be a more apt description of Luke Glanton, a carny who makes his living charging around the ‘cage of death’ on his motorcycle. When we meet him, the carnival is nearing the end of a run in Schenectady. Killing time between performances, Luke runs into Romina (Eva Mendes) a woman he had a fling with the previous time the carnival blew through town.

Romina is reticent to re-connect with the flighty Luke, for two major reasons: 1) The new man in her life (Mahershala Ali), and 2) A 1-year old bundle of joy named Jason that resulted from their fling. She doesn’t tell Luke about item #2, but he soon finds out anyway.

Now, Luke is determined to “do the right thing” and provide for his son. He promptly quits the carnival gig, accepts a job offer from a shady auto repair shop owner (Ben Mendelsohn) and sets about ingratiating himself back into Romina’s life (choosing to ignore that whole live-in boyfriend thing).

However, minimum wage isn’t fitting in with Luke’s timetable. In lieu of a raise, his boss helpfully suggests that he try robbing a few banks for supplemental income (a sideline that the auto shop owner himself has dabbled in on occasion). With his special skill sets, Luke discovers that he has a knack; soon earning himself a nickname in the local media as “The Moto-Bandit”.

Luke’s reckless approach to his newfound criminal career puts him on a karmic path with that of another young father with an infant son, a rookie cop named Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), and it is at this point that the film takes some unexpected turns. Without giving much away, we’ll just say Luke’s story is prologue for what evolves into a more sprawling, multi-generational tale in the Rich Man, Poor Man vein.

It can also be viewed as a three-part character study, with Officer Cross’s story taking up the middle third, culminating with a flash-forward 15 years down the road involving a tenuous relationship that develops between the now high-school-aged sons of the two men (Dane DeHaan as the older Jason and Emory Cohen as AJ Cross). There’s also a noirish subplot with echoes of James Mangold’s Cop Land; in fact one of its stars, Ray Liotta, is essentially reprising the same character he played there in Cianfrance’s film.

While it’s tempting to label Cianfrance’s screenplay (co-written with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder) as too sprawling at times (tossing everything into the mix…from classic film noir cycle tropes to Sirkian subtexts) he earns bonus points for coaxing uniformly excellent performances from the cast (particularly from Gosling, Cooper and the Brando-esque young Cohen), and for keeping true to its central themes: family legacies, the sins of the fathers, and the never-changing machinations of small town American politics.

Cop on the Edge, Neo-Noir, Thriller

Field of nightmares: The Silence ***1/2

September 14, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 30, 2013)

Generally speaking, a field of wheat is a field of wheat; nothing more, nothing less. However, in the realm of crime thrillers, such benign rural locales can harbor ominous underpinnings (Memories of Murder, The Onion Field and In Cold Blood come to mind).

And so it is in The Silence, a low-key, quietly unsettling genre entry from Germany. In the hands of Swiss-born writer-director Baran bo Odar (who adapted from Jan Costin Wagner’s novel), a wheat field emerges as the principal character; an unlikely venue for acts running the gamut from the sacred to profane, as unfathomably mysterious and complex as the humans who commit them within its enveloping, wind-swept folds.

A flashback to the mid-1980s, involving the disappearance of a 13-year old girl, whose abandoned bicycle is found amid the aforementioned waves of grain, sets the stage for the bulk of the story, which begins 23 years later with an eerily similar incident at the same location involving a girl of the same age.

A team of oddly dysfunctional homicide detectives (several of whom worked the former unsolved case) sets about to investigate. However, Odar quickly discards standard police procedural tropes by revealing the perpetrator to the audience long before the police figure out who it is.

Interestingly, this narrative choice echoes another German crime thriller (arguably the seminal German crime thriller), Fritz Lang’s M. And, just like the child-murderer in Lang’s film, this is a monster hidden in plain sight who walks “among us”… personifying the banality of evil.

Putting the “mystery” on the back burner allows Odar to focus on the aftermath of tragedy. The loss of any loved one is profound; but the loss of a child, especially via an act of violence, is particularly devastating to surviving family members (so poignantly evident to us all in the wake of Sandy Hook).

In that respect, I was reminded of Atom Egoyan’s 1997 drama, The Sweet Hereafter. Like Egoyan, Odar deep-sixes Cause and makes a beeline for Effect, peeling away the veneer of his characters like the layers of an onion, enabling his talented ensemble to deliver emotionally resonant performances.

Consequently, this haunting film is not so much about interrogations and evidence bags as it is about grief, loss, guilt, redemption…and an unfathomably mysterious field of wheat.

Cop on the Edge, Heist Caper, Neo-Noir

London’s burning: The Sweeney ***1/2

September 14, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 3, 2013)

If there’s anything I’ve learned from watching hundreds of crime thrillers over the years, it’s this: if you’re a bad guy, be wary of any police team that is known on the street as the “(insert nickname here) Squad”. Consider “The Hat Squad” in Mulholland Falls, Lee Tamahori’s 1996 neo-noir concerning the exploits of a merry crew of thuggish cops (led by growling fireplug Nick Nolte) barely distinguishable in thought or action from the criminals they chase.

The latest example is writer-director Nick Love’s new film, The Sweeney, which centers on “The Flying Squad”, a modern-day team of London coppers who share similarities with their fedora-wearing American counterparts. For one, they’re led by a growly fireplug (Brit-noir veteran Ray Winstone). He’s DI Jack Regan, a “cop on the edge” who swears by the adage: “To catch a criminal-you have to think like one”. You also apparently have to act like one; Regan and his clannish unit bend the rules (as they violate 57 civil liberties) on a daily basis. But they always get their man, sealing every take down with the catchphrase “We’re the Sweeney…and you’re nicked!”

Regan’s questionable methods have put him at loggerheads with his supervisor (Damian Lewis), and with head of internal affairs DCI Lewis (Steven Mackintosh). Lewis and Regan have a history of mutual animosity, which would likely turn into open warfare should Lewis ever discover Regan has been playing bangers and mashers with his estranged wife (Hayley Atwell) who is an officer in Regan’s squad.

However, office politics soon takes a back seat to Regan’s obsession with nailing his criminal nemesis (Paul Anderson), who Regan suspects as the mastermind behind a series of bold, military-style robberies. The squad intercepts the heavily-armed robbers in the middle of a bank score, but after a pitched gun battle on the busy London streets, they elude capture (set in Trafalgar Square, it’s the most tense and excitingly mounted cops ’n’ robbers shootout since Michael Mann’s Heat). Regan’s superiors are not pleased with his disregard for public safety, so they ask for his badge and gun; however with some clandestine help from his protégé (Ben Drew) he is soon “unofficially” back on the case.

Love’s film is based on a British TV series of the same name, which ran from 1975-1979. One needn’t be familiar with the TV version to enjoy this film, which I did immensely. The screenplay was co-written by John Hodge (Trainspotting), and is chock-a-block with crackling dialogue and amusing insult humor. Performances are excellent throughout; Winstone is perfectly cast, and I was impressed with Drew’s convincing performance as a reformed petty street criminal turned cop (you may know him as rap artist “Plan B”).

Interestingly, while it has a number of similarities to the Mann film referenced earlier, there is one classic neo-noir that Love’s film particularly evoked, and that is William Friedkin’s 1971 thriller, The French Connection. Winstone’s character is a kindred spirit to Gene Hackman’s “Popeye” Doyle.

Both bachelors, they are slovenly and bereft of social skills, but on the job, they are a force to be reckoned with; driven, focused and relentless in their desire to catch the bad guys. And like Doyle’s obsession with “the Frenchman” in Friedkin’s film, Regan’s pursuit of his quarry becomes his raison d’etre; all else falls by the wayside.

Most significantly, both characters see themselves as working-class heroes of a sort. The criminals they seek to take down are living high off their ill-begotten gains; they are cleverly elusive, yet so confident in their abilities to cover their tracks that they seem to take perverse pleasure in taunting their pursuers. This is film noir as class warfare. Or, this could just be a well-made cops and robbers flick with cool chase scenes.

Cop on the Edge, Family Issues, Neo-Noir

Friedkin knocks one out of the trailer park: Killer Joe ***1/2

August 31, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on August 25, 2012)

There’s a hard-boiled American crime film sub-genre one might dub “Texas Noir”, with its roots in the 1958 Orson Welles classic, Touch of Evil. Other notable examples are Sam Peckinpah’s original 1972 version of The Getaway, Bonnie and Clyde, The Sugarland Express, Wild at Heart, Lone Star, Blood Simple, The Hot Spot, No Country for Old Men, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and The Killer Inside Me. These films reside at the crossroads of sun-bleached adobe and permanent midnight; where a wellspring of deceit and malice burbles and roils just beneath the cowboy charm and a laid-back drawl.

The latest genre entry to hit the multiplex is a blackly funny and deliriously nasty piece of work called Killer Joe, from veteran director William Friedkin. Jim Thompson meets Sam Shepherd (with a whiff of Tennessee Williams) in this dysfunctional trailer trash-strewn tale of avarice, perversion and murder-for-hire, adapted for the screen by Tracy Letts from his own play. This is the second collaboration between director and writer, who teamed up in 2006 for the psychological horror film, Bug (which I have never seen).

Emile Hirsch is Chris, a low-level drug dealer who lives with his abusive alcoholic mother. As if his life wasn’t hellish enough, he’s up to his eyes in debt to a hood, who is threatening to take it out of his hide. This leaves Chris facing deadline pressure, with a short list of options for quick cash. Not being overly fond of his loutish mama, he decides to kill two birds with one stone by (figuratively) throwing her from the train and cashing in on her $50,000 life insurance policy. While he may not be the brightest piece of charcoal in the BBQ pit, he is savvy enough to realize that this will require collusion.

Enter the family: mouth-breathing auto mechanic daddy (Thomas Haden Church), slatternly stepmother Sharla (Gina Gershon) and his Lolita-ish nymphet sister Dottie (Juno Temple), who all live together in a cozy trailer home (now that I think about it, this family would feel right at home in a John Waters film). They tentatively approve of Chris’ plan to hire a Dallas police detective who moonlights as a hit man (Matthew McConaughey) to do the deed, with the assumption that the insurance will be paid out to Dottie.

“Killer” Joe (as our bad, bad cop is known) isn’t happy to learn that Chris doesn’t have the cash retainer. Joe is on the verge of cancelling when the virginal Dottie catches his eye. Hmm…perhaps we can work something out (I told you it was perverse).

While the noir tropes in the narrative may hold few surprises (the requisite red herrings and triple-crosses abound), the squeamish are forewarned that the 76 year-old Friedkin still has a formidable ability to startle unsuspecting viewers; proving you’re never too old to earn an NC-17 rating (I would expect no less from the man who directed The Exorcist, which remains one of the most viscerally unsettling films of all time).

That being said, those who appreciate the mordantly comic sensibilities of David Lynch, John Waters or the Coen brothers will find themselves giggling more often than gasping. The real litmus test occurs during the film’s climactic scene, which is so Grand Guignol that (depending on your sense of humor) you’ll either cringe and cover your eyes…or laugh yourself sick.

The biggest surprise is McConaughey’s nuanced work as the creepy, quietly menacing Joe. Frankly, I had written him off as an actor who had been steadily obfuscating fine early-career work in films like Dazed and Confused, Lone Star, and A Time to Kill by accepting relatively non-challenging roles in a forgettable string of boilerplate rom-coms (trust me…you won’t soon forget this film). Gershon camps it up with a cartoon rendering of a trailer park cougar, but that’s what makes her character so entertaining.

Newcomer Temple (daughter of British director Julien), is a revelation. She and McConaughey plunge fearlessly into a seduction scene that recalls controversial moments from Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake of Cape Fear (involving Robert De Niro and Julliette Lewis) and Elia Kazan’s Baby Doll (Eli Wallach and Carroll Baker’s infamous “porch swing” exchange, which earned the 1956 film a “condemned” rating from the Catholic church’s Legion of Decency).

Judging by the umbrage taken by disgruntled audience members at the screening I attended, Friedkin’s enigmatic fade-out may leave some viewers feeling “cheated”, but those “old enough to remember” will get a chuckle out of the director’s obvious in-jokey homage to his vintage classic, The French Connection (well, that’s my theory). Granted, Killer Joe may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but if you’re seeking uncompromising, non-formulaic, adult fare…have a sip.