You Were Never Really Here

There weren’t a lot of lines for Joaquin Phoenix to learn for this gritty and brutal story of “Joe”. He makes a living retrieving girls who have gone missing - voluntarily or otherwise, and repatriating them. Occasionally this happens straightforwardly, but more frequently this is a violent and dangerous business that sees him having to fend off people both in and out of uniform. It’s this latest job to rescue “Nina” (Ekaterina Samsonov) that is proving to be his most testing and as he struggles to rescue his quarry from a short-lived career in sexploitation, and stay in one piece, he is suddenly immersed in reminiscences of his own turbulent childhood. With his adrenalin all that is keeping him going, might this operation be his undoing or might it be his final victory over a father whose cruelty still haunts this forty-something man? Phoenix is on solid form here, with a less-is-more style of performance that borders on the visceral. His character is as purposeful and focussed as it is confused and traumatised, and I found the lack of dialogue really quite an effective tool as we see a little of what drive this man’s vengeful yet benign actions. It very much hits the ground running, and to be honest it does struggle to sustain the intensity of that pace after about half an hour, but with the emphasis now more on the psychology of his character, I found that I didn’t mind swapping some of established techniques of gory violence with something altogether more menacingly cerebral. Sure, there isn’t a great deal of jeopardy as the plot takes a fairly standard approach to it’s denouement, but it’s certainly never dull. See it in a cinema if you can, the audio is also important at helping create the tense atmosphere and that benefits from a bit of Dolby and you’ll be pleased to read that “Nina” is no shrinking violet, either.