asks Susan Sarandon (Melissa) of her father Dennis Patrick (Bill) after she overhears him discussing that he has killed her drug-dealer boyfriend Patrick McDermott (Frank). She goes on the run in the hippie communes of New York and Patrick goes in search of her with his new buddy Peter Boyle (Joe). Boyle is a racist bigot who admires Patrick for taking out a hippie. He wants to do the same.It's a hard-hitting film because of the ending. At the beginning, I didn't mind the killing of McDermott because he was such an awful person. There is no excuse for selling people drugs that aren't actually drugs. It's the sort of thing that gives drug-dealers a bad name. So, when he is killed, we feel for Patrick's character and hope he can get away with it. When we meet Boyle, his character is so unappealing that I found him funny and I enjoyed the friendship that formed between him and Patrick. Indeed, it becomes a sort of buddy-buddy movie especially once they go into the hippie world of drugs and orgies. It's great watching them join in and get involved. And they enjoy it. The film has many funny moments as we follow them on their journey.However, just as at the film's beginning with the drug dealer, the hippies are portrayed as nasty characters who steal and cheat and pimp out their girls. This is what ultimately leads to the powerful end sequence where Boyle and Patrick take things into their own hands. Are they so unjustified in their actions? Well, maybe they go a little too far but I suspect that what we find so offensive about this film isn't the opinions of Boyle's character. It's the fact that we are secretly on his side and we don't want to admit it.I don't have a bad opinion of hippies and certainly not in the context of the times. I do, however, have a problem with drug dealers who rip you off and the stealing vermin who are portrayed in this film. Is Boyle doing mankind a service?

A Film that could be Made Today with Slight Variations. The Power of this Product, Tapping into the Zeitgeist of the Late Sixties, Few Films Exhibit the Realism of Character and Setting so Profoundly and Accurately.Herman Wexler's Script is Excellent and Peter Boyle's "Joe" was so Realistic and Disturbing, as is the whole Production, that the Movie was Rejected by the Public's Consciousness and the Emotional Pain it Caused and Pushed it to the Fringes in some sort of "Denial" akin to Trauma, Blotted Out for Self Preservation.The Movie is Surprisingly Minimalist in Style, Drawing its Power from the Great Acting all around with Characters that Literally Come Alive on the Screen.Timeless in its Message of Social/Economic/Political Divide, it is a Chilling "Bad Trip". Once Seen, cannot be Forgotten. To call this Dated is Absolutely Inaccurate.Mesmerizing Low-Budget Movie that Hits all the Right Notes, even the Music is Contemporaneously "Right On" and not Cringe Inducing like most Hollywood Productions of the Time that were Clueless.This Great Film is the Closest You can get to Time Travel and Places the Viewer in 1970 America with Verisimilitude. No Easy Task. One of the Best Films to Capture the Ugliness that was this Time when it was "Changing".Note...Susan Sarandon's Film Debut.

...John "Rocky/Karate Kid" Avildsen's breakthrough feature "Joe" propelled two hitherto unknown actors, Peter Boyle and Susan Sarandon, onto the path to fame and fortune along with Mr. Avildsen, all the while creating a remarkably telling snapshot of the American psyche at a dangerous nadir. Indeed, the film enjoyed serious attention and financial success for a low-budget effort, mostly by dint of serendipitous release shortly after the Kent State shooting and the attendant protests, as well as a few other germane incidents that I'll leave to the few who may read this to discover, which is when I first saw it, freshly minted from high school. Exposure in magazines like Playboy didn't hurt, either. Retrospective viewing, though responsive to the film's timely, emotional impact, still reveals the clunkiness of a risibly Oscar-nominated screenplay. Said script evinces every brief moment of its purported eight day creation in a number of suspect plot devices: Joe putting two and two together via unlikely headlines and news broadcasts and Bill bringing his entire purloined stash to the hippie pad being the most egregious examples. Likewise, the dialogue runs the gamut from embarrassing cliché to occasional brilliance, but overall feels a bit too forced to be quite genuine. The film is overtly, painfully political, an O. Henryesque morality play transcribed for the dawning of the Seventies and seasoned with a generous helping of product placement masquerading as picaresque realism, a harbinger of developing trends.Perhaps this (and despite its flaws) is what makes "Joe" so much fun to watch, and why I give it a higher-than-it-deserves rating. Its blatant polarization and core pessimism make it as relevant now as it was over four decades ago. It taps a bellicose and resentful nerve that's hard to ignore.

I think this movie can be called the movie of misdirected rage.The characters of Joe and Bob were relics of the WWII generation who didn't quite understand their kids opposing the war, taking drugs and listening to rock and roll. But I think their real rage was at the fact that America was beginning her long decline from the heights the war left her at."Joe" himself is a low-rent Archie Bunker, ranting at all the things that have made him angry, living his life of quiet desperation, until he teams up with Compton, a guy who wants to avenge himself on the hippies who ruined his daughter.Honestly, most of the movie looks silly, the characters are worse than one dimensional, they're laughable. Peter Boyle was capable of better stuff.