Cage plays Joe Ransom, a man who we can see has had a dark and brutal past even before we learn any of the details. He drinks and gambles, keeps an exceptionally nasty bulldog as his only real companion and has a long-running feud with a local tough guy (Ronnie Gene Blevins) that grows more violent with each exchange. On the other hand, he is reasonably friendly and gregarious to those he trusts and inspires a lot of loyalty in return, especially in regards to the road crew of day laborers that he employs to poison trees on behalf of a local lumber company.
One day, a new kid named Gary (Tye Sheridan) shows up looking for work and Joe is impressed with his strong work ethic. He begins to take Gary under his wing and soon discovers that he is squatting in an abandoned house with his mother, sister and his father, Wade (Gary Poulter), a monstrous and abusive drunk whose idea of a hard day's work is smacking his son around and taking the kid's earnings for himself. Joe does what he can for Gary and a real friendship develops between the two but at a certain point, it becomes painfully evident that he can either ignore the boy's plight and watch him go down into the darkness that once consumed him or step in to save the kid, even at the cost of everything that he has struggled to achieve.
Based on the 1991 novel by Larry Brown, "Joe" was directed by David Gordon Green, and, like his star, his is a career that has also undergone a couple of inexplicable twists and turns. After making his debut with the extraordinary indie film "George Washington," he went on to make the equally compelling dramas "All the Real Girls," "Undertow" and "Snow Angels" before making his unexpected mainstream breakthrough with the decidedly different stoner comedy "Pineapple Express." That movie was pretty funny but he followed that up with "Your Highness," a fantasy spoof that is one of the biggest botches made by a recognizably great filmmaker of recent times, and "The Sitter," another misfired comedy whose main selling point is that it wasn't quite as unwatchable as its predecessor.
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