Movie · 1970 · Drama, Crime · 1h 47m · R · English
Curator score: 5.3/10 (13.2K ratings)
Keep America beautiful.
Overview
After murdering his daughter's drug-dealing boyfriend, a wealthy ad executive stumbles into a bar and strikes up an uneasy alliance with Joe Curran, a drunken bigot with a bloodlust who works at a local factory.
Ratings
Curator score: 5.3/10
IMDb: 6.8/10
Letterboxd: 3.51/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 83%
TMDB: 6.4/10
Director
John G. Avildsen
Production
The Cannon Group
Cast
Peter Boyle, Dennis Patrick, Susan Sarandon, Patrick McDermott, K Callan, Tim Lewis, Estelle Omens, Bob O'Connell, Marlene Warfield, Audrey Caire, Reid Cruickshanks, Mary Case, Jenny Paine, Rudy Churney, Robert Emerick, Gloria Hoye, Bo Enivel, Michael O'Neal, Frank Moon, Jeanne Lange
Where to watch
Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, MGM Plus, Philo, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A raw, ugly, darkly comic snapshot of post-60s American rage and class resentment, anchored by a ferocious Peter Boyle performance. It’s more provocative than polished, but its social bite and tonal audacity still land.
Best for
Viewers interested in early-70s New Hollywood provocation
Fans of bleak satirical crime dramas
People drawn to films about class conflict, racism, and social decay
Anyone curious about Peter Boyle’s most notorious performance
Skip if
You want sympathetic characters or a clean moral center
You’re sensitive to racist, homophobic, and generally hateful dialogue
You prefer tightly plotted crime stories over abrasive social satire
You dislike grim, low-budget, confrontational filmmaking
Overview
Joe is one of those early-70s films that feels like it was made with a match in one hand and a gas can in the other. It starts as a crime premise, then mutates into a vicious portrait of American rot: class anxiety, reactionary politics, generational backlash, and the casual cruelty people use to bond with each other. The movie is intentionally unpleasant, but it’s also sharp about how ugliness becomes a social language.
Worth noting
Peter Boyle gives the film its voltage. He makes Joe funny, repellent, and frightening in rapid succession, which is exactly why the movie works: it doesn’t let him become a simple monster or a punchline. Dennis Patrick provides a useful counterweight as the polished man whose own violence is hidden under respectability, and the film keeps exposing how thin that respectability really is.
Bottom line
This is not a crowd-pleaser, and it’s not interested in redemption. But as a time capsule of post-1960s disillusionment, it’s bracing and still uncomfortably current. If you like American cinema when it’s angry, messy, and willing to offend its audience in service of a point, this is worth the trip.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine (3.5★) · 162 likes
Before becoming famous and building a name for himself with not one, but two classic sports films, John G. Avildsen contributed to the easygoing and somewhat experimental counterculture cinema pioneered by films like Easy Rider, though one might argue that this picture has a more clear storyline.
The film also seems to have a legacy in that Peter Boyle was so disheartened by watching people cheering for all the violence that he refused to participate in films that glorified violence… more
Ziglet_mir (3.5★) · 153 likes
It's colder than a witch's tit.
This could be the most politically important film ever made. Joe is the conglomerative result of the rich elites, the American family, the hippie counterculture, and the counter counterculture thrown into the melting pot that is the great democratic experiment and showcases the fragmentation of society that had began (continued?) losing its way during the tumultuous 60s. The film and filmmakers may be taking digs at the good ol’ US of A but there are… more
David Whitman (4★) · 137 likes
An upper middle class conservative man (Dennis Patrick) meets a racist right wing working class man named Joe (Peter Boyle) in a bar. The conservative admits to accidentally killing a junkie in a fit of rage and Joe is excited and pleased to hear this. A strange bond and friendship is formed.
Peter Boyle is just outstanding in this, simultaneously funny and then creepy and dangerous in seconds. Some critics have labeled this a comedy —but it’s really a disturbing… more
Swartacus (4.5★) · 127 likes
"Joe, would you like to see where my kind of animal hangs out?
The American shmoe. How far out of his cave has he bear crawled? Has he tasted freedom? Has he made it to the bar with the ice in urinals yet? If he has, he's certainly been eighty-sixed more times than anyone can recall. Why don’t movies have theme songs that sound like Hill Street Blues anymore? This movie looks like it was shot for a dollar and… more
HKFanatic (4★) · 115 likes
I'm wrapping up Quentin Tarantino's new book on film, "Cinema Speculation," and knew I had to make time for John G. Avildsen's "Joe" after Tarantino's memorable description of a screening he attended as a young child. This is a raw, unapologetically ugly picture, a far cry from the classics like "Rocky" and "Karate Kid" that one associates with Avildsen. Granted, the version I rented looked pretty awful—the image was in standard definition and appeared cropped and playing at the wrong… more I'm wrapping up Quentin Tarantino's new book on film, "Cinema Speculation," and knew I had to make time for John G. Avildsen's "Joe" after Tarantino's memorable description of a screening he attended as a young child. This is a raw, unapologetically ugly picture, a far cry from the classics like "Rocky" and "Karate Kid" that one associates with Avildsen. Granted, the version I rented looked pretty awful—the image was in standard definition and appeared cropped and playing at the wrong… more