Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Boring

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

A Film that could be Made Today with Slight Variations. The Power of this Product, Tapping into the Zeitgeist of the Late Sixties, Few Films Exhibit the Realism of Character and Setting so Profoundly and Accurately.Herman Wexler's Script is Excellent and Peter Boyle's "Joe" was so Realistic and Disturbing, as is the whole Production, that the Movie was Rejected by the Public's Consciousness and the Emotional Pain it Caused and Pushed it to the Fringes in some sort of "Denial" akin to Trauma, Blotted Out for Self Preservation.The Movie is Surprisingly Minimalist in Style, Drawing its Power from the Great Acting all around with Characters that Literally Come Alive on the Screen.Timeless in its Message of Social/Economic/Political Divide, it is a Chilling "Bad Trip". Once Seen, cannot be Forgotten. To call this Dated is Absolutely Inaccurate.Mesmerizing Low-Budget Movie that Hits all the Right Notes, even the Music is Contemporaneously "Right On" and not Cringe Inducing like most Hollywood Productions of the Time that were Clueless.This Great Film is the Closest You can get to Time Travel and Places the Viewer in 1970 America with Verisimilitude. No Easy Task. One of the Best Films to Capture the Ugliness that was this Time when it was "Changing".Note...Susan Sarandon's Film Debut.

...John "Rocky/Karate Kid" Avildsen's breakthrough feature "Joe" propelled two hitherto unknown actors, Peter Boyle and Susan Sarandon, onto the path to fame and fortune along with Mr. Avildsen, all the while creating a remarkably telling snapshot of the American psyche at a dangerous nadir. Indeed, the film enjoyed serious attention and financial success for a low-budget effort, mostly by dint of serendipitous release shortly after the Kent State shooting and the attendant protests, as well as a few other germane incidents that I'll leave to the few who may read this to discover, which is when I first saw it, freshly minted from high school. Exposure in magazines like Playboy didn't hurt, either. Retrospective viewing, though responsive to the film's timely, emotional impact, still reveals the clunkiness of a risibly Oscar-nominated screenplay. Said script evinces every brief moment of its purported eight day creation in a number of suspect plot devices: Joe putting two and two together via unlikely headlines and news broadcasts and Bill bringing his entire purloined stash to the hippie pad being the most egregious examples. Likewise, the dialogue runs the gamut from embarrassing cliché to occasional brilliance, but overall feels a bit too forced to be quite genuine. The film is overtly, painfully political, an O. Henryesque morality play transcribed for the dawning of the Seventies and seasoned with a generous helping of product placement masquerading as picaresque realism, a harbinger of developing trends.Perhaps this (and despite its flaws) is what makes "Joe" so much fun to watch, and why I give it a higher-than-it-deserves rating. Its blatant polarization and core pessimism make it as relevant now as it was over four decades ago. It taps a bellicose and resentful nerve that's hard to ignore.

This was the first movie I viewed, just by chance, after my discharge from active duty in the Army in 1970. Forty-two years later, remembering nothing of the plot, only that I left the theater very emotional (rare for me), I found a DVD copy at a local library.I now realize why I have since not been able to regard Peter Boyle as anything but a frightening character, even in his comic role on the TV series "Everybody Loves Raymond." To be fair, his 1976 role in "Taxi Driver" didn't help, but his face, as seen in "Joe", is still the stuff of nightmares for me.That said, I learned that it was the now long-forgotten hostility between sectors of our society, so brutally represented in the film, created by the debacle in Vietnam that affected me so deeply in 1970. Today, even to one who was there, the experience of living in an America so torn, so close to open rebellion, is hard to conceive - even harder to explain. But fresh off the plane, still somewhat glum from the cold stares at the airport caused by my uniform, this film hit me like a hammer. And guessing from the huge profit it made, it did the same to many.It shocked me that I hadn't remembered Susan Sarandon was in this film - she has been one of my favorites - and, as a bonus, the then 24 year-old Ms. Sarandon appears nude. How could I have possibly forgotten that?

I think this movie can be called the movie of misdirected rage.The characters of Joe and Bob were relics of the WWII generation who didn't quite understand their kids opposing the war, taking drugs and listening to rock and roll. But I think their real rage was at the fact that America was beginning her long decline from the heights the war left her at."Joe" himself is a low-rent Archie Bunker, ranting at all the things that have made him angry, living his life of quiet desperation, until he teams up with Compton, a guy who wants to avenge himself on the hippies who ruined his daughter.Honestly, most of the movie looks silly, the characters are worse than one dimensional, they're laughable. Peter Boyle was capable of better stuff.