William Friedkin
Killer Joe

Suck on this chicken.

Killer Joe, directed by Friedkin, released in the homeland in 2011, arrived in Italy a year later, and stayed in the theaters of Milan for one week.

Tough film. Worse review: no popcorn, no laughs, a landslide of spoilers.
Let's start with the easy stuff: poster of the decade. Full stop. End of discussion, don't even try to argue or I'll call Lansdale and have you kicked from here to the day after tomorrow.
More easy stuff: the Italian poster sucks (after all, we left the title unchanged, we had to vent somewhere).
Even more easy stuff: this film is the adaptation of the eponymous play (it's noted but not visible) by Tracey Letts (if you were fans of awards and feeling intellectual, Wikipedia remembers that the play won the Pulitzer, I won't add more because I don't know jack about theater). Friedkin is the one of "The Exorcist" and "To Live and Die in L.A.", and finally, Killer Joe is Matthew McConaughey, a 44-year-old who hadn't hit a decent film since "Amistad" ('97), and whom I thought was a total hack.
Well, actually, it seems he knows his stuff.

Spoiler-free plot: open spaces, dry sun, dusty rain. In short, as the poster says, we're in Texas: white trash, redneck, trailer, the elegant suit bought at the discount, lovers, ex-wives, tits out and a killer (also a cop, just to cover it all).
Chris (played by Emile Hirsch, here "into the boiling oil" more than "into the wild") is drowning in drug debts. To get the cash necessary to solve his problems, he decides to split the life insurance money of his mother, who is currently enjoying excellent health, with his father and stepmother. To pull off the plan, they hire Killer Joe, who usually works for upfront payment but in this case makes an exception: he takes Dottie, Chris's slightly-retarded sister, as a deposit (Juno Temple, a 32-year-old Smurf who, thanks to her ridiculous height, manages to almost credibly play the role of a twelve-year-old). Chris is not happy at all, and when Joe tries to take her at the end... But we're skipping parts...

The spoiler begins: it will be discovered that no one gets the money and those who tried to trick the others will pay with their lives. Ah, no, it ends with everyone paying with their lives: Chris, his father, his mother, and Killer Joe, the role of the grim reaper is reserved for the slightly-retarded sister. The end.

No spoiler here: if watching this film you also thought "beautiful yes, but too Coen brothers" you are like me, someone who didn't understand a damn thing about the movie.

Returning to the spoiler, and more precisely to the interpretation key of the film. ...Yes, the "interpretation key," that thing that annoys me... Well, I understand that you don't like someone coming and telling you "oh look, this is how things are!" and pretends to teach you something, but I can't talk to you about this blessed Killer Joe without also telling you how it should be viewed, sorry... okay with the punches and the blood, but it all remains a bit too much for its own sake... I told you before that it wasn't an easy review, for god's sake.
So, I was saying: the infamous interpretation key...
Friedkin, a Catholic director and, as if there was a need to emphasize, fascinated beyond measure by the theme of "evil", brings a very simple story to the screen: a desperate scoundrel living in a universe of individuals almost as unsavory as he is makes a pact with evil to get out of trouble. To evil, we give the purest thing we have: even stones know that if you make a pact with the devil, you have to give him your soul.
Chris is the one who signs the pact, Joe is Satan, Dottie is Chris's soul.

End of the spoiler.

Killer Joe? Major film: bad, ignorant, raw, deep, sweet, ruthless, grotesque, shot with the experience of someone who has been making movies for 46 years.
Friedkin may not always hit the mark (Blue Chips was a real piece of trash, I agree), but when he wants to punch you in the stomach, he does it so hard that: you vomit, and he gets censored for 25 years.

Note on the thousand misadventures of Italian adaptations: I saw it in Italian, but I know that during the dubbing it was necessary to add sound carpets that those who saw the film in the original language claim take away realism and rawness from the whole... to which one could respond: Ah, because it could be cruder than this? Holy shit!