A New York assassin with a childhood trauma is on a mission to save an abducted girl from a brothel run by wealthy patrons. Lynne Ramsay’s noir, verging on abstraction, creates suspense from hypnotic imagery, Joaquin Phoenix’s masterful acting, and music by Radiohead’s guitarist Jonny Greenwood.
Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) has lived through the service with FBI and military campaigns. Now, he is a professional killer, capable of extreme cruelty and always working alone. His next assignment is to find a New York State Senator's daughter Nina, who has been abducted by the pedophiles related to influential officials.
In her screen version of the crime novel by American writer Jonathan Ames, Lynne Ramsay—one of the key figures of modern British cinema—focuses not so much on genre conventions, but deformations of reality, as if the latter has been filtered through different lenses to resemble either dream or hallucination. You were never really here has almost immediately acquired a cult status. The film was declared the modern-day equivalent of Taxi Driver and received the award for best screenplay and best actor at the Cannes Film Festival 2017.
You Were Never Really Here
Director Lynne Ramsay.
United Kingdom, France, United States, 2017. 90 minutes.
Two awards at Cannes Film Festival. 18+