Butler's Cinema Scene

Joaquin Phoenix

“YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE”  My rating: B- 

89 minutes | MPAA rating: R

A brutal character study encased in an overripe — some might say rancid — melodrama, Lynne Ramsay’s “You Were Never Really There” offers Joaquin Phoenix at his moodiest.

Depending upon your point of view, that will be either a warning or an enticement.

When we first meet Joe (Phoenix) he’s cleaning up a hotel room where something very nasty has occurred.  He’s wrapping a bloody hammer in plastic and rinsing gory items in the bathroom sink.  There are also insert shots of someone — it’s hard to say just who — struggling to breathe with their head wrapped in a plastic dry cleaning bag.

Joe — who has the graying beard and long hair of a ’60s Jesus freak and seems to be about 50 pounds overweight — is not, as you might think, a serial killer.  Nor is he a hit man, exactly.

His specialty is retrieving lost children — kids who have been snatched or sold into sex slavery. It’s hard to say whether he’s in it for the money, for the sake of the kids, or because it gives him a good excuse to go Neanderthal on some really despicable people.

Job completed and fee collected, he shuffles off to the Bronx house he shares with his invalid mother (Judith Roberts), with whom he shares a love/hate relationship.  There are moments of genuine  tenderness here.  There are also flashbacks to Joe’s tormented childhood; apparently he spent lots of time locked in a closet while Mom entertained.

Other brief blips from Joe’s past reveal him to be a veteran who fought somewhere in the Mideast.

Joaquin Phoenix, Ekaterina Samsonov

Ramsay’s screenplay, based on Jonathan Ames’ novel, finds Joe getting an assignment to track down the missing pre-teen daughter of a powerful state senator.  Precisely how the girl — her name is Nina and she is played by Ekaterina Samson — became involved in a sleazy child porn ring is never made clear.

But Joe gets to work with his usual enthusiasm, staking out a posh townhouse where wealthy men go to have their jollies with little girls and then putting his hammer to use taking out the guard staff and a few patrons as well.

But his efforts have repercussions. Soon his mother, his associates and just about everyone Joe knows find themselves victims of a well-funded, wholly corrupt conspiracy that reaches even into the bedroom of New York’s governor (Alessandro Nivola).

So, of course, it’s showdown time.

At times “You Were Never Really Here” plays like an acid-flashback version of Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” coupled with Luc Besson’s “The Professional.” The killer and the kid become running buddies, fighting off agents of evil. Periodically it veers into silliness.

But one cannot discount Phoenix’s work, a nearly wordless performance fueled by an almost animal rage and a soul-sucking angst. Even when the material isn’t up to his standards, he makes it work.

| Robert W. Butler