This film was deeply uncomfortable to watch. I won’t go into detail (so you don’t need to skip this, at least), but every trigger warning under the sun should be applied to this film.

There’s one key scene that fulfilled, for me, three functions - a hook for this kind of marketing, the moment when the titular Joe went from cool and calculating to outright insane, and Matthew McConaughey’s comeback moment.

Seriously - McConaughey is mesmerising in this film, and is really given the room to act in a way that the rest of the cast aren’t. I think that’s deliberate, though - in a film like this, a quieter handling of the role could have easily relegated Joe to a secondary character - the Big Bad lurking in the background - but his charisma fills the screen when you least expect it.

The hardest thing for me to parse was the relationship between Joe and Dottie, and that mostly comes down to a lack of understanding regarding her intelligence; that said, I suspect that was supposed to be ambiguous. (See: the ending.)

I found myself laughing at Thomas Haden Church at some really inappropriate moments. But that happens most of the time.

Honestly, I’m not sure I can recommend this, because it’s harrowing to watch, but it’s also a great piece of filmmaking that relishes in its madness in a way that most crime films don’t. Watch it if you have the stomach, but if you have even the slightest sensitivity to violence, consider giving this one a miss.