Yes the acting is very good and there are quirky characters. If you think that everyday life on the tough side of town is nothing special and not worth spending 2 hours watching it in a movie, like I do, then you will be bored by this film too. There is barely a plot and what there is doesn't even make sense. Hated the ending too, mostly because it made the least sense. One minute the lazy dirtbag kills a hobo for $2, something he has obviously been doing with no regrets for 20 or 30 years, the next he minute he willingly kills himself when under no threat. Yep, totally believable. I guess they want you to think that he instantly developed a conscience after being a total asshole for most of his life. And he couldn't just start being nice, but had to completely give up in an instant, sorry guys, not buying it. You can hang out at a homeless shelter for free if this kind of behavior is something that you consider entertaining.

This movie is a failed attempt at Americana gone wrong. I hate downer movies where the actor is just trying to get an award of some kind by playing a deep brooding character. Nick Cage didn't do too badly in his acting but it was still Cage. I am never a fan of characters that are totally good or totally bad. I think the effort was worth watching but like a pot of deer stew, it needed all of the right ingredients. A pinch of something was missing. The ending was cool but predictable and I kind of hoped it would got another way. "What did you do, Joe" was the worse line and you will see for yourself. On the positive side, the story moved slowly but had a bit of dark humor in it. The characters looked like they were in their real element. I hear one of the mains was actually a homeless man. The directing was also pretty good. I would recommend you give this movie a go.

Joe is a tough motherf-er of a film. David Gordon Green returns to his down and dirty Southern filmmaking roots for a story about a man who was once a criminal, Joe of the title, and is now trying to get by by leading a group of working men to cut down some trees, and winds up being an unlikely mentor/protector of Gary, who has a (to put it lightly) bastard of a father and who takes whatever Gary makes for himself. This is the kind of film that may not be perfect in all places, but I love it anyway for its brutal honesty and in ramping up the emotional stakes scene by scene.And Green makes everything so palpable and real by putting real people as actors, as he has done in many films as director (Prince Avalanche, George Washington, Undertow to name a few). Even people who don't need to really be played by real people at least feel like they're filled by non-professionals; a cop who has to process Joe's arrest at one point, and stops by to try and tell him to stop what he's doing or he'll never get out of jail (and can't help but having a cigarette after quitting three weeks) is one of those great touches. Authenticity is the name of the method here, and few things can embody that in a film like Joe like the character of Gary's father Wade (aka "G-Dawwg) played by Gary Poulter.Poulter was a real homeless man who was found by Green and brought on for the film. You'd have to convince me otherwise from seeing him here that he wasn't pulled off the street, but it's startling how effective he is, and how he makes Wade such a hateable, despicable presence (sadly, he died two months after filming, giving in to the sort of demons that were omnipresent in this story). He isn't the only antagonist as Joe has a fellow ex-con or some other shady figure - Ronnie Gene Blevins is this guy who constantly refers to his scarred-through-a-windshield face as a badge of honor - and he is also a powerful threat to the characters.But it's Poulter's show for when he's on, and he more than holds his own with Tye Sheridan as Gary and Nicolas Cage as Joe. Every time you see Poulter on screen you wonder who is going to get it next; a random moment involving another hobo and a horrible attack makes this very clear (you know it's coming, how this builds up, but Green showing the simple primitive nature of it, and an eerie kiss on the guy's head when it's done, it's shocking).What about Cage, you might ask? This is his best dramatic work in as long as I can remember. One might look at the poster and wonder if the thing is photo-shopped, but pay that no mind - this is Cage fully embodying a torn, good-bad man with a lot of demons and a dollop of the bad-ass. It's curious that Sheridan did basically two movies back to back where he had an older, tough, grizzled father figure (before this he was the boy in Mud opposite McConaughey), but here there's something even rawer, nerves dangling all the time. And while Green pays attention in his documentary-cum-poetic way - this is the kind of movie where we see both real men taking down real trees, played by real workers, while there are also montages with one of Joe's women narrating about this or that and the other - Cage has to inhabit this man and makes him, ultimately, sympathetic and human in all dimensions. Otherwise it just won't work.Joe works in such a way that it's hard to watch at times. You feel like you're there and can smell the endless cigarettes and glasses of whiskey and soda, and how gnarly a house like the one Gary has to live in is. Cage reaches up to the heights that Green puts down for him, which is what one might hope for, though after some time slumming it in B/C/Z grade schlock one can never tell. Joe, Gary and Wade are some of the most compelling characters I've seen in a film in a few years, and if you can stick with its harshest points, you get rewarded with some monumental naturalistic acting and direction.

Nicholas Cage. Once a bankable star, has found himself falling on the wrong side of some filmic choices of late. Or, to put it another way, he's made some right turkeys recently. However, I'm pleased to say that 'Joe' isn't one of them. Okay, it's not great, but it's better than most of his stuff.Unsurprisingly, Cage plays the titular 'Joe' – the leader of a lumbering crew in America. He's doing his best to make an honest buck, but things don't always go his way. There are plenty of people who seem to want to either bust his skull in over debts, or just shoot him dead. And, if that wasn't enough to be getting on with, he hires a young lad with an alcoholic father – two people who complicate his life yet further.I guess the first thing you need to know if you're contemplating watching Joe is that it is a drama. A straight drama through and through. There's no action, adventure or even light comic relief. It's a pretty bleak affair. You'll need to be in the mood for something very 'character-driven' to appreciate this. But Cage holds it together and we see shades of the reason he was so bankable once upon a time. It's his baby, but credit has to go to the young lad who plays his new crewmember.It's a long film, clocking in at nearly two hours, so you really need to be in the mood for something this 'no thrills.' I would say it was 'fun,' only it wasn't. But then it's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be a dark and depressing drama. And for that it succeeds. You just need to make sure you're in the mood for something like this. 'The Rock' it is not.