It's young Sheridan's Gary who makes the film work, with his mix of earnest ambition, stubborn courage and hopeful endurance. He gives "Joe" the honesty it needs.
A fantastic story of destiny finally calling for a drifter ( ... ) except that Gary Poulter was found dead two months after shooting wrapped, a victim of the alcoholic, hard-living, cancer-ridden existence he had somehow put behind him while on set.
For Nicolas Cage, whose dumb, rant-for-hire projects have lately been making audiences forget how good he can be, Joe is more than a rescue - it's a re-birth.
A small-scale, expertly acted character study in which Cage plays an ex-con trying to make a quiet living in a backwater Texas town and trying, above all, to keep certain troublesome character tendencies in check.
What happens along the way isn't particularly surprising to those familiar with Southern gothic sensibilities. But if the path is predictable, the acting is not.
The way director David Gordon Green uses Cage, and the way the actor modulates the performance, seems a quiet commentary on who he's become onscreen, and how to draw upon it.
