My Name Is Joe MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +2 Content: -2 1/2

My Name is Joe tells the story of Joe Kavanagh (Peter Mullan), a poor, likable, recovering alcoholic in a big city in Scotland. Before long, Joe meets Sarah Downie (Louise Goodall), a social service agent who works with struggling families. She has the consistent job, a home, and a car, but Joe is scraping by on welfare and doing odd jobs. Their relationship quickly becomes a clash of worlds with the poor man Joe trying to lead the life of someone who is from the middle class. And even though they like each other tremendously, they find that breaking the social class barrier is harder than it may seem. Adding even more tension to their relationship is Liam (David McKay), Joes friend who is a father and is married to a drug-addicted woman. Joe and Sarah each try to solve Liams problem their own way, which turn out to be drastically different My Name is Joe is a well-directed, well-acted film that takes a hard and serious look at the plight of the poor in our world, and it should perform fairly at the box office.

The films portrayal of the poor is its best quality. Serious questions are raised about whether or not the poor really are destined to stay poor their whole lives. These kinds of questions need to be asked and answered, and this film does a good job of doing both. But, in its portrayal of the poor, the characters constantly yell obscenities. The 233 f-words are a testament to this and they make it plain that none of these characters can form a sentence without using the f-word. There are also many other obscenities that include terms referring to male and female genitals, along with 39 regular profanities and 30 mild and moderate crudities. The film also includes an implied sex scene that shows female breast nudity as the woman undresses. Several scenes of violence are also scattered through the film, but these are not exploitive or graphic. All in all, this film is marred by incessant obscene language, profanity, and one scene of nudity.

Preview Reviewer: John Adair
Distributor: Artisan Entertainment, 2700 Colorado Ave., Second floor, Santa Monica, CA 90404