'You Were Never Really Here' (2017)

I was not prepared for this one. Reading the breif synopsis on Amazon intrigued me, but, my god, was it inadequate.

Joe (Joaquin Phoenix), plays a combat veteran that now lives a life as a hired gunman. His missions are to find missing girls that are being used as a means to satisfy the desires of sexual deviants. While he is not on an assignment, Joe stays at home tending to his elderly mother (Judith Roberts), who is fading from this world both mentally and physically.

The film opens up with Joe finishing his current assignment and returning home. He takes the first night back to make sure his mother has been well during his absence, and the next morning seeks out his employer to receive the payment for the assignment's completion. After some conversation about future plans, Joe receives his payment and information about his next mission. The recovery of a senator's young, missing daughter. He then travels to the home of the Senator to gather the necessary intelligence to begin the investigation into her whereabouts. The Senator explains that she has been missing for over 48 hours, and has also received a text message as to her current location. As Joe places a recent photo of the girl, Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov), into his pocket, the father looks him in the eyes and tells Joe to make them pay. His mission has now begun, and it appears to be like the countless missions that he has completed in the past. Little does he know, however, that this high profile assignment will take a turn that even I was unprepared for.

Joe rents a vehicle, stops at a local hardware store for the necessary tools, and acquires a nearby hotel room to begin his surveillance. It does not take him very long to gain access to the lavish building where Nina is supposedly begin held captive. I thought it prudent to mention that he does not use a firearm, instead, he chooses a hammer. The reason I found this intriguing is that you can see the logic in the choice. A firearm would raise many alarms, but I am under the impression that is not the sole or main reason he chooses the hammer over the gun. I believe he uses it to get personal with the scum that he is charged with dispatching. This allows him to inflict, not only, his will, but his emotions onto his targets.

After pacifying any threats, he finds Nina and quickly removes her to his hotel room to await for the transfer to the arms of her father. At this point in the story, I felt like things were fairly normal given the atmosphere, but I was so, very, very mistaken. I will be spoiling the plot of this film, because it is rather dark and I don't believe is fit for all of my readers to view. At least, if they watch it based of my writing this, then they will know what they are in for. If you want to find out for yourself, then continue reading no further.

As Nina and Joe are awaiting her father's arrival, she flips on the TV and is skipping through the motel channel listings to pass the time. She happens to stall on the locals news channel that is reporting breaking news of the suicide of a man that leapt from a building somewhere in the city. The man was her father, the Senator that hired Joe. As Joe wraps his arms around the empty shell of a girl in an attempt to console her, the electronic lock on the door activates. He rushes to the door to find the receptionist on the other side. Before any words can be exchanged, the man's face explodes all over Joe's front. Two uniformed officers enter. While one of them grabs Nina, the other stays behind, poised to execute Joe as he sits on the bed where they were both sitting just moments earlier. As you can tell, the mission was not at all what he was lead to believe. Whoever was behind this was one step ahead of him the entire time. Upon escaping the hotel, he finds that his employer has been murdered, his mother executed in her sleep, and tries his best to not let the devastation derail his new mission. Saving Nina from an even fiercer evil than the initial he was hired to put down.

The men that killed his mother were still lying in wait for him to come home, but he kills one and wounds the other in order to extract any information that may lead him to who was responsible. He gets what he needs but this is where the film takes that dark twist that I mentioned earlier. Before the man breaths his last, he informs Joe that Nina is now being held in the Governor's mansion. He also explains that her father and the Governor would swap young girls back and forth, implicating her father as one of the degenerates that he was hired to kill. This explains the suicide of the senator to me, but you can draw your own conclusion as to what brought him to the point of taking his own life. Joe tracks down the Governor and follows him to his mansion, and enters the estate with nothing but his trusted hammer. Unfortunately, he is never afforded the opportunity to get his hands on the Governor himself, as he finds the worm laying in a pool of his own blood, his throat slit from ear to ear. He discovers Nina sitting in the dining room, a bloody razor laying next to her on the table. The film ends with the two of them enjoying breakfast at a family diner.

I will say that I am glad there were no graphic scenes of abuse or rape, as I am not willing to place those images in my mind. Instead the director (Lynne Ramsay) artistically allows the trauma to portray itself through the actions and emotions of the actors, and the inference has the darkest of undertones. I wish nothing but the worst of evil on people that prey upon the innocence of children, so, as you can imagine, watching these 'men' get what they had coming, was delightful. A part of me was in full agreement with where Joe was and why he was doing what he was doing. There was some light to be found in this dark tale, however. Joe was suffering from some sever childhood trauma, and was seeking death throughout the story. However, death seemed to simply follow him, but never touch him directly. The pain for him was much worse than death. Before the credits rolled, I was left with the impression that Nina was placed in his path just as much to rescue Joe from himself, as he was placed in hers to rescue her. In the end, I wanted nothing more than for the pair of them to escape the mental prisons and the pain that was plaguing them both.

Of course, this is simply a story, but the fact remains that trauma and abuse of this caliber is a very real occurrence that happens every single day in this world. I can only imagine what brings people to the point at which they would willingly inflict such evil upon another so innocent. If any of my readers have had, or know someone that has been a victim of this sort of abuse; just know that my heart and soul are with you. There are good people in this world, but it physically sickens me that there are people so evil as to harm a child. Karma has special plans for people such as this, and the tab is very high.

Thank you for your time, and I hope this work finds you well.