Web posted on:
Tuesday, February 02, 1999 12:02:06 PM EST

From Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- I've read that director Ken Loach shot his powerful new movie "My Name is Joe" in less than a week, and I'm making sure that I start this review off with a great big standing ovation for the accomplishment.

Your average Hollywood studio takes longer than that to determine what color ink is best suited for marking through unwanted script passages. Then, a higher-up fires off a memo and the color gets changed back again a week later (and then they end up with "Virus").

There's a wonderfully scrappy earthiness to everything about "My Name is Joe" (including the outstanding lead performance by Peter Mullen) that's the polar opposite of what's being released by the majors these days.

That's because this is an independent film in the truest sense of the word, coming from way-out-there in Scotland and starring actors who very few people are likely to even recognize (I mean, Parker Posey doesn't even show up for a cameo).

With a few notable exceptions, of course, the American indie scene long ago ceased to present us with resolutely unadorned slices of life like this one. Most of today's indie directors are simply grandstanding for a job with the big guys, but we still want to act like they're making cheap, "unflinching" movies because of their sheer love for the medium. Well, you keep telling yourself that while everyone whoops it up over the multi-million dollar checks that get passed around out in the snow at Sundance every year (and the poorly executed "dramedys" that usually receive them).

"My Name is Joe" is the real thing, all right, and (aside from a disappointingly open-ended wrap-up), it's also real good. Mullen is the "Joe" of the title, a recovering alcoholic in his late 30s who's been struggling through sobriety for a little over a year. Loach absolutely refuses to romanticize Joe's predicament; the character knows that he's in for a lifelong struggle, and he clearly remembers the awful moment when he realized that he needed to straighten himself out before somebody (not necessarily him) winds up dead.

Joe is a realist, but he still has a too-trusting heart. He complains that he has nothing to show for his life -- no money, no woman, no job -- while being just as committed to taking care of the small-time criminals who make up the terrible soccer team that he coaches as he is to cleaning himself up.

Mullen has a piercing gaze that serves the movie well. You feel that Joe is proud of his desire to make things right in his life, and he wants to convey the conviction as clearly and precisely as possible. He shoots so straight when he talks to people, you sometimes fear for him. As pleased as you start to feel for the guy, you still recognize that he may be overestimating the newfound sturdiness of his own shoulders, and the tension mounts when he suddenly takes a serious detour that he never could've expected.

That's for later, though. First, Joe finds himself falling in love with a lonely health care worker (Louise Goodall) who attends to the low-income families on her beat as if they're blood relatives. She's a quiet life force who, when combined with Joe's motor-mouthed enthusiasm for merely living to see the next day, finally begins to open up as a woman. Their fumbling attempts at conceding their passion for each other are tender and extremely realistic. Loach allows his characters the chance to come together in their own good time, yet another little ploy that would have probably been scuttled the moment a major production entity got its hands on the script.

I don't want to ruin the impact of the film by revealing the plot twist that sends Joe into a world that he's fought tooth and nail to leave behind. Suffice it to say that it's not his sobriety that gets tested, but his commitment to friends who have no such commitment towards him.

Again, the movie basically stops happening more than it actually ends, but maybe that's Loach's intention. Regardless of the inherent danger, Joe's just going to have to wake up tomorrow and try to feel his way through another day. For a recovering addict, that 24-hour experience is like surviving a war that gets declared over and over again, every time the alarm clock rings.

Believe it or not, "My Name is Joe" is in English, but the Glasgow accents are so severe, subtitles have been provided! Thank goodness for that. There's tons of profanity, drug use (but it's not lingered over), a couple of beatings, some nudity, and a few sexual situations. I can't stress how believable Mullen's work is. He's simply brilliant. Rated R. 105 minutes.