Killer Joe

Directed by William Friedkin

(NC-17)

**

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William Friedkin’s new Texas noir “walks a fine line between comedy, horror, and realism,” said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. The results are mixed, though the 76-year-old director of The Exorcist and The French Connection has drawn a “stunning performance” from Matthew McConaughey. The actor proves “intoxicating” as the title character, a suavely diabolical police detective who’s hired to murder a trailer-park mom by her own family, mostly for the payoff on her life insurance policy. Adapted from a Tracy Letts play, the movie is burdened by characters giving speeches and scenes that “go on way too long,” said Kyle Smith in the New York Post. Worse, its recurring bursts of violence “seem to add up to nothing but a pathetic attempt by Friedkin to get back on the list of hot directors.” The savage climactic scene that earned the film its NC-17 rating surely can’t be defended, said Scott Tobias in the A.V. Club. “It’s provocation for provocation’s sake.” Still, Friedkin has rediscovered the bold energy that first won him acclaim. Whatever this picture’s shortcomings, “at least they’re never failures of nerve.”