Killing Joan crime drama about an enforcer for the mob who enacts her revenge on those who wronged her.
As cool as a movie about a superhero (of sorts) who is essentially a combination of Nightcrawler and Jean Grey sounds, it doesn’t transition well to the screen here in Killing Joan. Although it always helps, a movie does not necessarily have to have a huge budget in order to be a success. Quentin Tarantino showed us this early on with Reservoir Dogs, and Christopher Nolan did the same thing a few years later with Following and Memento. What made these films great despite being low budget is that they have stories that really suck the audience in (not to mention amazing writing and strong performances). Without a strong story, as Killing Joan shows us, we are left with films that struggle to ever captivate.
The film starts in what feels like a B-horror flick as two common criminals attempting to flee a scene are chased down and dragged away by a mysterious force. We then jump to a party where enforcer Joan Butler (Jamie Bernadette) rolls in with her crew to collect an outstanding debt for their mob boss, Frank (David Carey Foster). The debt collection goes awry and and Joan winds up shooting dead the man she’d shown up to collect from.
The next morning Joan is visited by Frank who has come to give her a friendly warning that if she continues crossing the line as she’d done the night before, it’ll result in a shorter lifespan. She tosses the warning aside and carries along with her daily mobster duties. The next job that she’s tasked with is threatening a local do-gooder, Anthony (Teo Celigo), who helps run a shelter for the downtrodden. Anthony is causing headaches for some of the local crime lords and they need him silenced. He also happens to be Joans ex, and upon tracking him down she struggles to deliver the warning due to her conflicting feelings for him.
Later on in the night Joan goes to meet up with her team only to find they’ve decided that they would be better off without her. They’re tired of her getting all of the credit and having to follow her lead, so they beat her to death in a back alley. Instead of this costing Joan her life, she comes back from the dead with teleportation and telekinesis superpowers. Full of revenge and anger Joan starts to track down and kill those who have wronged her, but she might not realize just how high the corruption goes.
Killing Joan feels like a passion project of someone who never had involvement with film, but was able to scrape together enough money to shoot a motion picture. The writing is chock full of clichés that have been pulled out of any bad mobster movie, and the acting feels forced and uncomfortable. The story has trouble finding itself and we are left with somewhat of a jumbled mess that is part revenge thriller, part love story, and part superhero flick. All-in-all, the best way I could describe this movie is an hour and a half soap opera.
One major gripe that most moviegoers have is when things are not explained. We’re willing to accept unbelievable circumstances, but we do need an explanation of how things have happened. In Killing Joan, we completely fail to get that explanation. In movies like The Crow and Spawn, we have similar situations of our anti-heros dying and then coming back to life. That is a completely acceptable plotline because we are given a reason for their return, despite how ridiculous it may be. The fact that we get no such explanation here is downright frustrating. On top of that, we then have other characters popping up that magically have the same superpowers. Of course we get no explanation of how they gained their power either, so it just manages to compound the overall frustration.
There are plenty of films out there that are considered bad, but that still have bright spots that the audience recognizes. That’s unfortunately not the case here. Some of the main issues that we run into with Killing Joan are poor acting and poor writing. The manner in which the lines are delivered will make the audience squirm in their seats, and the lines are pretty droll and unoriginal to begin with. It would’ve been refreshing to at least have well-done action sequences, but even those feel cheesy and fake.
I do have to give kudos to director Todd Bartoo for putting this film together. He directed it, wrote it, and produced it. I’m sure that he put his heart and soul into making this film happen, and although it was a miss for me, it’s an impressive feat nonetheless. Having said that, unless you’re a fan of low budget B-movies, I’m going to suggest passing on this one.
Killing Joan releases on Digital 4/3 and DVD 7/10.