You Were Never Really Here

You Were Never Really Here (2017) is Lynne Ramsay's crime thriller starring Joaquin Phoenix, available to watch online on iFILM. A former soldier and FBI man makes his money pulling trafficked girls out of brothels. His tool of choice is a ball-peen hammer. He leaves no witnesses.

Joe (Phoenix) is a mass of muscle, scar tissue and flashbacks. He lives with his elderly mother and fights the urge to end his own life every single day. His latest contract: find a senator's daughter held in an underground sex ring. Joe does what he knows how to do and frees the girl, Nina — and then the routine collapses. The men behind the kidnapping are people he should never have crossed, and now the hunt turns on him.

Ramsay adapted Jonathan Ames' novella, compressing a whole world of violence into 85 minutes. At Cannes the film took Best Screenplay, and Phoenix won Best Actor. Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead wrote the jagged, anxious score. This isn't a revenge action flick; it's a portrait of a man who is barely there himself. Stream You Were Never Really Here (2017) online on iFILM.