Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
A traumatized veteran, unafraid of violence, tracks down missing girls for a living. When a job spins out of control, Joe's nightmares overtake him as a conspiracy is uncovered—leading to what may be his death trip or his awakening.
Lynne Ramsay's film is a strikingly singular work — an art-house neo-noir that fragments its narrative through trauma, ellipsis, and sensory disruption rather than conventional thriller mechanics. Joaquin Phoenix delivers a physically and emotionally extraordinary performance, communicating volumes through near-silence and physicality. Ramsay and DP Thomas Townend shoot the film with a deeply subjective, impressionistic eye — fractured flashbacks, surveillance footage, oblique angles — making it visually unlike almost any other genre entry. Its conception and voice are genuinely one-of-a-kind. The plot itself is relatively thin and serves more as a vessel for psychological texture than intricate storytelling, and the ending, while tonally consistent, feels somewhat unresolved and withholding in a way that frustrates as much as it intrigues.