In this murky Brown-Green world, it seems, nobody can. Only Joe’s filled with a poison of his own: a violence inside that he can’t keep down. New to small-town Mississippi and completely destitute, Wade and Gary get a job working on Joe’s clearance team, poisoning trees. It’s not the only time you’ll hear a sharp intake of breath from the audience.

“Every time we land you say it’s going to be different, but it ain’t,” complains Gary. Could this Mud -minus-the-sunshine represent his very own McConaissance?īased on Larry Brown’s 1992 grit-lit novel and steeped in the same grinding poverty as Winter’s Bone, Joe begins as it means to go on, with hobo Wade (Gary Poulter) and his teenage son Gary (Tye Sheridan, from Mud ) sitting, lost, on the railway tracks.

After a post- Bad Lieutenant / Kick-Ass rough patch ( Season Of The Witch, Stolen et al), Joe sees Cage, an Oscar-winning actor lest we forget, grasping the snake – a slippery, difficult, unlovable role – and more than proving his mettle. When, in the midst of David Gordon Green’s drama, Joe (Nicolas Cage) picks up a poisonous snake, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a metaphor, but it did happen.

You are my sunshine oblivion island