You Were Never Really Here | Lynne Ramsay's brutally gripping thriller

You Were Never Really Here Joaquin Phoenix Ekaterina Samsonov

(Image credit: The 61st BFI London Film Festiva)

Brutally compelling.

Playing a haunted military veteran who rescues kidnapped girls from sex-traffickers, Joaquin Phoenix is absolutely mesmerising in this brutally compelling art-house thriller, adapted from Jonathan Ames’ pulp-noir novella by Scottish director Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin).

Phoenix’s suicidal loner Joe exudes a bone-weary anguish - we see fleeting flashbacks to an abusive childhood and traumatic war service. But he sets about his business with grim determination and ruthless efficiency. Indeed, we’re already flinching the moment he picks up a ball-peen hammer - his weapon of choice. He rarely uses a gun.

Yet Ramsay actually keeps most of the violence off screen or at the margins of the frame. We witness Joe’s remorseless assault on a brothel for paedophiles, for example, via fleeting moments of black-and-white CCTV footage. Even so, aided by Tom Townend’s arresting cinematography and Jonny Greenwood’s disquietingly dissonant score, Ramsay sustains a mood of intense tension and menace that really gets under your skin.

Certificate 15. Runtime 90 mins. Director Lynne Ramsay

You Were Never Really Here available on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital from StudioCanal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6E0-JoE8DM

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.