Joe

3 Stars (out of four)

Joe is being hailed as Nicholas Cage's triumphant return to Indie films, and boy, is it ever!  It is such a shame that Cage made a lot of bad career choices over the last decade.  He used to be King of the Indies, giving consistently solid performances time and again, which culminated in his incredible, and incredibly depressing, Oscar-winning turn in Leaving Las Vegas.

And then something went horribly wrong.

Maybe it was the newfound job offers, but bad decision after bad decision piled higher and higher until he became somewhat of a joke.  Don't believe me?  Consider some of the stinkers he's made since then:  Ghost Rider, Season of the Witch, Astroboy, Bangkok Dangerous, National Treasure, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Wicker Man, Captain Corelli's Violin, 8MM.  All suckeroos for the most part.  And while he did some good stuff occasionally, he never really hit his stride, but hopefully Joe will put him back on the right path.

Cage plays Joe, an ex-con who is somewhat of a legend in a small town.  He is basically a good man, but has a violent temper and a comparably violent past.  He runs a work crew that clears Forest areas for lumber companies.  One day, Gary (Ty Sheridan), a 15-year-old drifter shows up at Joe's worksite asking for a job.  Joe takes him on, and as the movie progresses, becomes an unlikely role model for Gary.  Gary supports his drifter family, squatting in a condemned house, and is at loggerheads with his alcoholic and abusive father, Wade (played with son of a bitch menace by Gary Poulter).  When Wade pushes Gary and Joe too far by his actions, there is a very violent denouement that redeems Joe.

This is not an easy movie to watch.  It deals with the conflicting pulls of being a masculine man in hard times as well as the temptation and horrible consequences of dealing with problems through violence.  There is nothing heroic here, merely the ugliness of everyday violence and its often tragic ending.  It is difficult to watch scenes where Wade physically abuses his son terribly to get money for that next drink.  Yet Gary feels a responsibility, even love bordering on hate relationship with his father. It's all he knows, and he is stuck with him.  So when Joe becomes almost a surrogate father for Gary, he sees for the first time that life doesn't have to be scrounging in garbage cans and squatting in abandoned houses.  Both Cage and Sheridan are electrifying in their performances, but Cage is working with all cylinders firing in this one.  It is a performance impossible to ignore and should be seen.