On J List of Movie Reviews
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Joe (1970)
Rate:
9
Viewed:
9/21
9/21:
Predating Taxi Driver by six years, Joe is a powerful film about the generational
gap with a horrifying end result.
The first thirty minutes is slow: a typical hippie spat with the girl's parents getting in the way. But when Peter Boyle
finally makes his on-screen appearance in the bar as the king of bigots, the movie begins to take off.
As a result, Peter Boyle should've earned an Oscar nomination; some of the stuff his character says is brilliant and
relevant today. It's hard to tell if Peter is in a leading or a supporting role; to me, it feels like
half-half.
A tough, racist working-class character, Joe is way over to the right while the hippies are far to the left. In the
middle is the girl's father who's susceptible in swinging to either way. It depends on who can influence him more. The way
Joe talks, he makes sense on one level and can be arresting but shows a lot of bigotry and unwillingness to adapt to the
changing culture. As a result, there are some awkward scenes, but Dennis Patrick has done an excellent job of making
them work by politely acquiescing to his viewpoints.
Had Joe been alive today and seen what's transpiring nowadays, he'll have a heart attack out of shock. To solve the problem,
Joe will kill millions of people, and by doing so, he'll turn into a hypocrite because to be an American is to
exercise the right to live freely in a democratic society. That's something Joe never got in 1970 in spite of his stupid
slogan: HONOR AMERICA.
The film was a huge box-office hit: taking in $26 million against a budget of mere $106,000. Only Norman Wexler, a debuting
screenwriter, received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. He also did Serpico
with Waldo Salt of Midnight Cowboy fame and
Saturday Night Fever. Sporting an extensive history of bipolar behavior, Norman Wexler
was once arrested for threatening to shoot President Richard Nixon.
Susan Sarandon makes her feature film debut before going on to have a long career in acting. Peter Boyle has always
played fringe characters but gives the performance of his career in Joe. Interestingly, he would
appear in Taxi Driver as Wizard and give Travis Bickle some advice about life. Talk about
two nutjobs in the same room.
All in all, when people think of Midnight Cowboy and
Easy Rider, they should also include Joe.