Tracy Letts begins his trailer-trash comedy Killer Joe with the corniest of platitudes. A runaway druggie named Chris Smith needs $6,000 to stop ‘some guys’ from killing him. He asks his dad who declares himself skint but together they plot to bump off Mrs Smith, Chris’s mum, and collect her life insurance. Interesting idea. Luckily there’s a hitman available who works as a cop and goes by the sobriquet, ‘Killer Joe’. (Note to police forces everywhere: an officer whose nickname suggests a second career as an assassin may be worth investigating.) Joe wants payment up front and the penniless conspirators offer him Chris’s attractive sister, Dottie, as a ‘forward loan’.
Joe seduces the nervy young sexpot over a tuna supper and the creepiness of the set-up is diminished by his swaggering eroticism and by Dottie’s eagerness to lose her virginity. Legally, Joe is a rapist but he’s also chivalrous, sensitive and decent.
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