You Were Never Really Here

The forth feature film from Scottish iconoclastic director Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin) is a captivating, art-house take on the action thriller. Joaquin Phoenix—in his most beefy, bearded, and barely understandable performance to date—plays Joe, a tormented warrior who earns his living rescuing young girls from evil and exacting bloody vengeance on the evildoers. The story (based on a novella by Jonathan Ames) and its themes are of such little consequence that the title could apply to the movie itself were it not such a riveting viewing experience.

Using her limited budget to great advantage, Ramsay creates a visceral action picture where the violence is often inferred rather than directly witnessed. Thus the brutality in this movie is far more potent, and resonates much longer than in typical contemporary genre films. A shot of Joe buying a ball peen hammer at a hardware store fills the viewer with dread, and the subsequent steely action sequence viewed mostly through silent, blurry, monochrome security cameras chills one to the bone.

Ramsay and her usual team of editor Joe Bini (We Need to Talk About Kevin, Andrea Arnold’s American Honey and many films by Werner Herzog), cinematographer Tom Townend (Attack the Block, Hidden, and all Ramsay’s features), and sound designer Paul Davies (The Proposition, ’71, and all Ramsay’s features) cast a cinematic spell that make this preposterous pulp narrative feel utterly credible. Johnny Greenwood's obstreperous score blends perfectly with the overt sound design and distinctly composed imagery. And Phoenix, always an undisciplined mess of raw talent, is as fascinating to watch as ever. While You Were Never Really Here is no masterpiece like We Need to Talk About Kevin, but it is a tight, intense work that shouldn’t be missed—an oddly unpleasant movie that you’ll somehow want to watch again right away.