JOE: SOMETHING IS MISSING

When viewing a movie most people subconsciously realize that the film is only good if the sum of all parts comes together. A great performance can be missed when the cinematography is lousy. A bad director or screenwriter can take a wonderful story and butcher it to make the movie intolerable. If all parts are bad then the turkey and rotten tomato awards raise their heads. Knowing that a single part is good doesn't make up for the bad. Such is the case with JOE.

Nicolas Cage stars as Joe, a foreman for a group that kills trees to be cut down by a lumber company. He works hard, plays hard, drinks hard, treats his crew fair, but in the end is an honorable working stiff. Into his world comes Gary (Ty Sheridan).

Gary's family is far from good. His father is a raging alcoholic prone to violence and anything for a drink. The family is a set of drifters moving from town to town, living in abandoned homes as a way to have a roof over their heads. Gary approaches Joe hoping for work. Joe gives him that opportunity and Gary proves he can hang in with the rest of them. When he brings his father along to work as well we see the man has no interest in actual work and would rather just take the money from his son who earned it.

Joe takes a liking to the boy but avoids getting in the middle of a confrontation. He has a past that involved jail time and a hair trigger temper that explodes later in the film. Joe might be able to keep that anger in check but the bigger the bond he forms with Gary, the more likely we'll see it erupt before the end of the film.

But there are other things in Joe's life that cause him trouble as well. Another man in town with a scarred face continues to plague Joe. We first see him following Joe and next see him shoot him with no clue what is going on. Later we find out Joe hit him in front of a bar full of patrons a few days earlier. This same character runs into Gary and his father on a backwoods bridge, insults Gary's family and ends up beat down by him. This sets the stage for the final confrontation of the film, a sequence that provides both Joe and Gary with choices that will affect both of their lives forever.

As the movie progresses it seems more intent of showing us glimpses of the characters instead of presenting a story. We see Joe visit a local whorehouse. We see him take in a young woman; I'm still not sure who she was or how they knew one another. That's the problem with much of the film. So many bits and pieces are there but we have no way of knowing why or how. In watching the extras I learned more about what I just watched than I did while watching it.

The movie feels disjointed, as if something were missing. Not just missing but parts missing as if sequences were cut from here and there to make the film fit a time slot while at the same time sacrificing story. We see a car pull up beside Joe and the woman look at him and then glance away as if she knew him. I had no clue until watching the extras that this woman was Joe's ex-wife. A sequence having the two of them meet at the post office was cut from the final film which would have let us know that. Instead we just see some stranger looking at Joe and then looking away.

The majority of the film feels like this. Thinking back I don't think a clear line of storytelling runs until perhaps the last 30 minutes of the film. Then for me, as a lover of books and writing, comes the unforgivable sin. The screenwriter talks about how he changed the ending of the book because that's what he thought the writer was going for. What that means is "I love the source material but I think I can make it better". They do this a lot in film and it rarely is the case. Instead what could have been a good, solid story is suddenly put together piecemeal so that you're left wondering what the story actually was.

Cage does a fine job as Joe turning in another great performance as he is prone to do. The fact that the putting together of the film makes his character seem to have a split personality doesn't help, but he shines through anyway. Sheridan, an up and coming young actor on the rise, finds himself in that same boat. It was hard to judge how well he did due to the helter skelter storyline.

I've read some review of this film that praised Cage and talked about how great this movie was. While watching it all I could do was bring up the time stamp to see how much longer it was going to be till it ended. For me those who praised it did so because of the usual reasons. It portrayed a blue collar worker who was anti-authority so if you have that mind set you love him. It showed a backwoods world that was incredibly stereotypical of Hollywood's belief in what the world looks like between LA and NY. What would make a great movie is if those making them actually lived in that part of the country and saw it was nothing like they depict except in the most obscure corners.

In the end this movie, though having an actual end, left more questions than it offered answers. It told a story that rambled over too many areas without focusing on one until near the end. It offered a good performance in a bad movie. I can only recommend this to Cage fans. Everyone else might want to look for something else.

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