You Were Never Really Here (2017)

Director: Lynne Ramsay
Writer: Lynne Ramsay, Jonathan Ames
DOP: Thomas Townend
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Ekaterina Samsonov, Judith Roberts, John Doman

A traumatized veteran, unafraid of violence, tracks down missing girls for a living. When a job spins out of control, Joe's nightmares overtake him as a conspiracy is uncovered.

It is Lynne Ramsay's take on the hit man genre and it is a genre-bender. It is brutal at times and the body-count is high but the focus is not much on the violence. We piece together through several flashes that happen over the course of the film that he had an abusive father, suffers from PTSD due to his involvement in gulf war and the FBI job that he took after also only added to his nightmares. He's on the edge and quite suicidal. Choices that he makes as an adult is because of the abuse he suffered as a kid but they don't really help him to overcome it.

Lynne Ramsay confirmed that the use of Psycho and Shawshank Redemption on the film was totally off-the-cuff but they do perfectly suit the film. Then again, it doesn't really matter whether the director intended or not, it is what you make of it that counts. Kevin Spacey is supposed to have been sexually abused as a child by his father and he kind of repeated the same, if the allegations are true. I do think something like that is going on in this as well. The first time rescue of the girl gave that vibe and he seems to be fighting against it.

Music for the film was done by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood and it is an integral part of the film. It gives such a cool vibe to the film in some places. I've only seen one other film in Lynne Ramsay's short but long-spanning filmography and that was 'We need to talk about Kevin', which was quite excellent and fucked up. This is much more of a fun watch, relatively.

Rating: 4.25/5