Joe (1970)

Directed by

John G. Avildsen

Genre

drama film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 47m

Rated

R

Rating

6.4 of 10 from 78 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A businessman kills his daughter's boyfriend and teams up with a racist factory worker to find her. Their search ends in a violent raid on a hippie commune where the businessman accidentally shoots his daughter.

satiricaltensedarkly comicbleakunsettlingbrutalchillingprovocative

What happens

Joe is a 1970 American satirical drama film directed by John G. Avildsen, from a screenplay by Norman Wexler, and starring Peter Boyle, Dennis Patrick, and Susan Sarandon in her film debut. The film follows New York business executive Bill Compton (Patrick) as his life unravels into murderous chaos after he kills his daughter Melissa's drug-dealing boyfriend Frank Russo and enters into a peculiar partnership with factory worker Joe Curran (Boyle), a veteran with racist fantasies of vigilante violence. Their search for the missing Melissa (Sarandon) leads to a raid on a hippie commune that turns into mass murder where Compton mistakenly shoots his own daughter. The film's plot coincidentally resembled a real-life mass murder in Detroit, where the killer Arville Garland had killed his own daughter Sandra. The real-life killer gained publicity for his actions, and received letters of support from hundreds of parents. The film has received praise for its black comedy-style satire of social class. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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