Joker Review

Phoenix is the reason to watch, and the performance is physical before it is psychological: the laugh arriving as an involuntary spasm he has to ride out, the ribcage visible as he dances in a bathroom, a body that only learns to move comfortably after the violence starts. Hildur Gudnadottir's cello score is written as his interior weather and does more character work than the dialogue manages. Lawrence Sher shoots a 1981 Gotham of garbage strikes and fluorescent buses that is well observed without being showy, and the staircase descent is a genuinely great single shot.

Where it thins is originality: the film borrows its architecture almost wholesale from two Scorsese pictures, and the late-night talk show finale plays as homage rather than invention. The mother-and-medical-records twist is a cheap route to sympathy, and the social commentary is broad enough to mean anything. As an actor's showcase with immaculate craft support it is remarkable. As a screenplay it is derivative.