You Were Never Really Here * * * *

         Joe sorts things out.  Things that other people don't know how to, or are too scared to.  His specialty is recovering the innocent from the clutches of the corrupt. He is a big man. His body has many old scars.  His hair and beard is long. He's like a tragic hero in the mould of Samson or Hercules.

Joe gives new meaning to the cinema 
reference  "Hammer Horror"

       So, if you have a teenage daughter who has been abducted and is being held in a secret house and being forced to give sexual favours to older men, Joe's your man.  He'll get her out.       
          A senator who's daughter is a victim of these terrible people engages Joe's services: "I heard you can be brutal" he says to Joe.  "I can be", Joe mumbles in a manner that sounds more like an apologetic admission than a boast.   And indeed he can be, as we soon learn. 

        Joe goes to a hardware store and selects a ball-pein hammer, then he finds out where said girl is being held, then he goes to work.  He uses the hammer on the heads of his adversaries in the same manner a ship builder might use it on the head of a stubborn rivet.

        You might be surprised to learn that this is not really an action film.  It's more of a character study and a rather disturbing in-sight into the mind of a man who can do this. From scenes where we learn he lives with his mum, to laying on the floor next to a man he has just killed and holding his hand and singing his favourite song with him as he dies, to conducting a funeral and burial in his own way.

         It's a fascinating film. Sometimes the story is a bit hard to follow, but you put together pieces afterwards. It's directed by Lynne Ramsay who I last remember from the excellent (and equally disturbing) "We Need to Talk About Kevin".  

          It stars Joaquin Phoenix as Joe.  Clearly he has mentally and physically well prepared himself for the role as he gives an utterly brilliant performance.