Joe

Nicolas Cage is Joe, a dude with a sketchy past now in charge of a crew that poisons trees on behalf of lumber companies. Gary is the abused 15-year old who shows up at Joe's work site one day looking for a job. Joe puts him to work and he works hard. They develop something of a father figure relationship as we see more of Gary's troubled background - his abusive father, his indifferent mom, etc. And we learn more about Joe too - his penchant for creating trouble for himself for no reason, his frequenting of prostitutes, and so on. The idea here is obviously to be something of a deep, emotional movie leading us to care about the connection between Joe & Gary. It fails in that regard. Instead we're just left with a bunch of seemingly random scenes and a movie that kind of pinballs all over the place. Another disappointment for me. 3/10.