Dir:

David Gordon Green

With: Nicolas Cage, Tye Sheridan, Gary Poulter

Runtime: 117 minutes

HELLO? Is that the acting police, missing persons branch? I'd like to report the safe return of one Nicolas Cage to the mainstream thespian fraternity. Yes, all his credentials, previously best displayed in Leaving Las Vegas, Adaptation, and Raising Arizona, appear to be intact.

Reason for re-emergence? A rather fine American indie set among the poor and huddled masses yearning for oblivion or a buck.

Based on the book by Southern novelist Larry Brown, Joe is set in a rural America where the only low-skilled jobs to be had are dirty and dangerous, and those who cannot work have turned drinking into a full-time occupation.

Joe, played by Nicolas Cage, has fallen into a cranny between the two existences. Being foreman of a gang of forestry workers keeps him sober enough for much of the day, and more or less out of trouble.

Though just 15, Gary (Tye Sheridan) is well enough acquainted with Joe's side of the tracks. When we first meet him he is quietly remonstrating with his drunken father (Gary Poulter) to get a grip for the sake of the family. Thanks for his efforts arrives in the shape of a slap. Gary takes it on himself to be the man of the house now, if only for the sake of his mute sister, the reason for her silence unspoken.

So it is that Joe and Gary meet, the latter desperate for work, the former seeing in the child someone who needs help. Gary, reckons Joe, is "a child folks left behind", a youngster on the fence "balanced right there". Joe, the sinner, has found a soul to save.

He is a rum kind of saviour, mind you, the kind given to drinking, wild women, and explosive bursts of rage. Like his dog, Joe is best kept on a tight leash. But he can also be kind, and a friend straight and true, as the men who work for him know. For a child desperate for a father figure, Joe will do.

Mercurial, eccentric, prone to howling at the moon now and then - Cage can do this stuff in his sleep (and in some films seems to be doing just that). It would be unfair to say he has chosen his roles like a blindfolded man aiming at a dartboard, but let's just note that he once played a mole called Speckles. If such roles seemed a long way from winning the Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas it is because they were.

Joe is a great fit for Cage because the film is like Leaving Las Vegas, but without the Vegas.

Just like Gary, he is a man on the fence, ultimate fate unknown. It is a part which calls for a quiet sort of despair, a restrained desperation, and Cage succeeds triumphantly in delivering all this and more.

One would say he was the best thing in the movie if not for young Sheridan, a natural born movie star if ever there was one. What a career he is having - first Malick's The Tree of Life, then Mud, and now this.

Director David Gordon Green (Prince Avalanche, Pineapple Express) cast many of the supporting actors from the local community, which gives his film a relentlessly raw air. The faces in the bars and hovels of this small town are pure early Howson, masks fashioned by hard-living.

In his efforts to keep matters real, however, Green rather goes over the score. Almost everything and everyone is depressing, and metaphors are given the full foghorn treatment. The forestry workers, for instance, are not just felling any old trees, but replacing weak ones with stronger ones. The sheer awfulness of everything is exhausting.

But one need look no further than Joe and Gary for succour. What an outstanding pairing Sheridan and Cage make, not as younger and older versions of the same actor, but as complementary forces. They light the way through the gloom, ensuring Green's film arrives at where it wants to go. Not always an easy picture, then, but a deeply satisfying one. Oh, and welcome home Mr Cage.