Nicolas Cage wears an unidentified watch

The watch on Cage's wrist is a simple steel piece with a round case, visible as he leans against a tree and pushes hair from his forehead. It's the only clean thing about him. David Gordon Green's Joe (2014) is set in the rural South, adapted from Larry Brown's novel, and Cage plays Joe Ransom, an ex-con who runs a lumber crew poisoning trees so the timber company can replant them. The work is ugly and the pay is bad, but Joe does it honestly. When a fifteen-year-old named Gary (Tye Sheridan) shows up looking for work to escape his violent father, Joe gets involved in ways that test whether he's actually changed.

Gary Poulter, who played the abusive father Wade, was genuinely homeless when Green cast him and died before the film's release. That detail haunts the film's margins, and Cage gives one of his most restrained performances opposite actors who aren't acting so much as existing on camera. The steel watch is about right for a man who keeps his head down and tries to stay out of trouble.