Why joe is nicolas cages most underrated movie of the 2010s

The film itself is a dark and messy human drama contained in a Southern Gothic aesthetic.

Nicolas cage movies

He spends his days poisoning trees so that they can be torn down legally by a lumber company. Sure, everyone including Joe uses the money for boozing and whoring, but at least they earned it somewhat honestly. Joe tries to help the boy live right, teach him a few survival lessons, and maybe even redeem himself in the process. Of course, the world these characters inhabit is simply too harsh and unforgiving for any sort of soul-building happy ending.

Granted, they were far less harsh, but the director has always had a fascination for rotted-out rural settings and the surreal beauty to be found in those environments. Working with his longtime cinematographer Tim Orr, Green finds a poetry to the poverty he depicts. Most of the cast are untrained locals including Gary Poulter, whose magnificent performance will never be followed up since he died shortly after production wrapped , and Green clearly enjoys letting them improvise to add further rich textures to the world.

For much of the running time, Green is merely world-building. At the center is Cage, and while it would have been all too easy for the actor to break out some of his finest ham and cheese in sequences where he chain smokes while chopping up a freshly killed animal, he plays things small and real. Cage wears it all on his face and delivers a magnificent performance of a broken man struggling against his most basic instincts to be a good one.