David Gordon Green’s “Joe” largely succeeds in immersing us in a rural world of cruelty, ugliness, decay, neglect and aggression, but if there is a point to it all, I couldn’t find it.
Nicolas Cage, miscast as a Texas redneck — he talks and acts as if he isn’t from the same world as everyone around him — plays an ex-con leader of a work crew who has a history of dangerous run-ins with the police. Despite his hard-drinking ways, he is a respected employer as well as a mentor to a 15-year-old boy (Tye Sheridan, who played a similar role in “Mud”).
Green, who alternates between muted naturalism (“George Washington,” “Prince Avalanche”) and broad studio comedies (“Pineapple Express”) manages to convince Cage to be less overbearing than usual, but the actor lacks the Matthew McConaughey-level charm required to make us care much about his character. Mainly, Green wallows in sordid settings and woeful behavior and confuses the repulsive with the interesting.