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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY, APRIL 8, 2014
PAGE 7
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'Joe' gives Nicolas Cage his best role in a decade
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
"Joe" is the movie that will make you remember how good Nicolas Cage once was and can be again.
A Southern Gothic tale of alcohol, violence, sin and redemption, this David Gordon Green film gives Cage his finest showcase in years. Is this a harbinger of better things to come, now that he's hit 50? Probably not. But it's good to see he still has his curve ball.
Joe is damaged, resigned to the violent streak he knows he must "restrain," even at 48. His love of cheap bourbon means he's never without a bottle — at home, at work or on the road. He drinks alone. He makes his living by extending a job and a friendly hand to impoverished men, some alcoholics, like himself, men clinging to the bottom rung of the ladder in the corner of rural Texas they all share.
Joe runs a day labor work crew that clears brush and poisons commercially undesirable trees for a big timber company. He loads up his battered pickup with poison dispensers and eight or so African-American down- and outers every morning, and they do what the rules-bending company wants them to.
Joe is a tough man who knows his way around a knife, a bottle, a brothel and a pistol. He minds his own business and keeps a pit bull chained up in front of his house. He has a history, which the movie only hints at — a life he couldn't hang onto that must have involved a family, trouble with the law and local trouble-makers who still hate him.
Maybe that's why he takes
pity on Gary. The kid (Tye Sheridan of "Mud") is only 15, but he's got it rough. His old man Wade (Gary Poulter) is a brutish, aged drunk who keeps his drifting family around him even though he has no intention of supporting them. They're there, living in squalor, for him to steal from when they have money and to beat when they don't fork it over.
Joe gives Gary work. And the kid comes to treat this violent, short-fused alcoholic as a role model, a straight shooter who only insists he look him in the eve and consider him a friend.
Green, an Arkansas native who made "Undertow" and "All the Real Girls" before Hollywood turned him loose on "Pineapple Express" and "The Sitter," has an eye for worn Southern faces, and he fills this film with non-actors who have the pot bellies, tortured grammar and bad teeth of rural Southern poverty. At this level of society, race takes a back seat to focusing on your own daily struggle — to make a little money, get a little liquor, stay out of jail and reach another sunrise.
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In houses where old newspapers cover holes in the walls, where everything that wore out or breaks beyond the limited capacity to repair (cars, trailers, appliances) is left in the yard, everybody has a gun and a willingness to use it. Violence hangs over the bars and every conversation and encounter carries a hint of menace. Who will snap? What will they do when they do?
His down-and-out work crew knows to "keep it real, with Joe." So does most everyone else in town, from Coleman the grocer to the high-mileage madam at the local brothel (Sue Rock). They
know his heart. But they also know his moods.
Cage, beefy and grey-bearded, moves with ease through this world where Joe can share a drink with "Blind George," help neighbors skin a deer (they do it in their ruin of a kitchen) or take in the trashy but loving Connie (Adriene Mishler), who needs a break from her mother and her mother's scummy boyfriend. Cage suggests a man who knows he has demons and longs to control them, but is too old to lose his contempt for those who won't let him do what he wants.
Green, working from a Gary Hawkins script based on Larry Brown's novel, has created Joe's world from movie memory
— a lot of "Undertow", a little "Prince Avalanche" — and the simple knowledge of what you find if you get far enough away from the cities and the interstates in the Deep South. The setting, characters and story reek of authenticity.
And Cage, playing Joe close to the vest, gets across a character and a code that he and we know will be tested by Gary and Gary's family. Cage lets us see the struggle and envision the reckoning to come as only a man with Joe's mysterious history can.
And most authentic of all are Wade, the stumbling but cunning old man, and Joe, outwardly kind, but a powder keg who never named his dog because to him, a pit bull is merely another instrument of violence.
Poulter, a real-life homeless man who wears a hard life in every wrinkle on his weathered face, has eyes that give away cutthroat cunning and guilty resignation. (He died after filming this.)
David Gordon Green, left, and Nicolas Cage on the set of "Joe." The film's limited-release date is set for April 11.
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
TELEVISION
Barbara Walters sets retirement date from 'The View'
NEW YORK — Veteran TV journalist Barbara Walters will make her last scheduled appearance on "The View" on May 16, ABC announced Monday.
The network will honor Walters' five decades in broadcasting with a week-long celebration, "The View," the daytime talk show she helped create back in 1997, will commemorate her departure beginning May 12. ABC also plans to air a two-hour prime-time special looking back at Walters' career on May 16, and will name ABC News Headquarters in New York City in her honor.
Walters, who got her start in 1961 as a reporter on "Today," moved to ABC in 1976, where she became the first female co-anchor of a news program. Over the years, she has interviewed numerous world leaders, including Fidel Castro, Margaret Thatcher and every president and first lady since Richard Nixon. On the other end of
the spectrum, she has also earned a reputation for reliably conjuring tears from celebrities in her annual, pre-Oscars special, which she wrapped in 2010, and in her "Most Intriguing People" broadcasts. Walters announced last May she would be leaving "The View" in 2014, but did not set an exact date. Though she will no longer be making regularly scheduled appearances after May 16, she will remain involved in her capacity as an executive producer, according to ABC.
- McClatchy-Tribune
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