You Were Never Really Here (2017)

Ramsay delivers a brutal masterclass in sensory overload that is unequivocally worth the wait. The critic singles out the lean, visceral character study of Phoenix's traumatised hitman and the amplified colour and sound design.

Lynne Ramsay’s feel-bad vigilante thriller drop-kicks the viewer into a cosmos of pain and depravity with only faint flickers of light. It is a sustained masterclass in implying violence without lingering, anchored by Joaquin Phoenix’s gruellingly subtle performance and insidious sound design.

Lynne Ramsay’s story of a tortured paedophile catcher uses familiar revenge-movie ideas as building blocks towards something far more disturbing: existential terror. It is original and utterly thrilling, driven by a central performance as bruised and bloody as sirloin.

The critic praises Ramsay's lean, intense avenger noir as a stunning reimagining of genre, with its impressionistic style and cryptic flashbacks. Phoenix's performance as the haunted protagonist is singled out as brilliantly brutal and empathetic.

Phoenix delivers a fearsome, physically transformed performance as a damaged veteran enforcer in this fragmentary, ferociously beautiful film. Ramsay twists the source material into a spooky haiku of carnage with electrifying unconventional vantages on the mayhem and a haunting distortion of noir themes.

Lynne Ramsay’s elliptical portrait of a traumatised hitman is a head-spinningly accomplished work that reconfirms her as one of the most thrillingly distinctive film-makers. The focus on the protagonist’s fractured psyche, granular cinematography and immersive sound design create an overwhelming experience of pure cinema.

Ramsay offers an unflinching stare into a tottering male psyche with singularity of voice and stunning control of form. Phoenix shoulders the emotional complexity perfectly in a dark, disturbing and difficult deep dive that is mightily impressive.

Ramsay's blistering fourth feature is a brutal 21st-century Taxi Driver elevated by masterful filmmaking craft and an awards-worthy Phoenix performance. The critic praises the visionary direction and handling of adult, violent material.

Praises the hypnotic grimness, Phoenix's riveting performance, Ramsay's elliptical style and exquisite filmmaking, calling it haunting and hard-to-shake.

The critic calls the film a brutal and intense psychological thriller that marks a departure for Ramsay. Phoenix delivers a brilliant, intensely internalised performance informed by PTSD, while Ramsay's inventive direction finds unusual ways to depict violence and gets inside the character's head.

Ramsay is back on top form with a vengeance in this impressionistic, enigmatic thriller focused on the inner life of Phoenix's taciturn hitman. The assured execution, expressive cinematography, and underlying compassion are highlighted amid the violence.

Ramsay returns with a scuzzy, stripped-back thriller focused on the man rather than the mission. Phoenix stuns with a traumatically internal performance and Ramsay's unwavering vision reaffirms her as one of our greatest living filmmakers.

Lynne Ramsay’s film is a powerfully nihilistic bad trip that starts at spiritual ground zero and drills down through a traumatised hit-man’s world of inner doom. By the end despair has doubled back to cue a kind of redemption, even in a world still damned.

This brutal, unconventional thriller avoids clichés with minimal dialogue and off-screen violence shown in unusual ways. Phoenix gives an excellent performance as the haunted protagonist, making the film intense and unsettling despite some vagueness.

The critic describes the film as a brutal, mood-driven story of a haunted avenger played by Joaquin Phoenix, praising Ramsay's iconoclastic direction over conventional plot.

The film is cinematically gripping with assured visuals, a tour-de-force raid sequence, and a strong Jonny Greenwood score, but it serves a familiar story without Ramsay’s usual singular poetry or emotional vitality.

The review portrays it as a savage, hard-going film with intense filmmaking and Phoenix's performance, but notes excess and grimness, finding it fascinating yet difficult.

The film keeps the audience at a remove through its compact, elliptical storytelling and lack of exposition, presenting impressions via images rather than clear narrative. It explores systems of power and abuse but ultimately feels more about its own structure than its characters.

Ramsay’s minimalist film aspires to transcend genre with fractured storytelling and awry compositions but becomes ponderous rather than profound in its artful flourishes. It is a fleeting mood piece with occasional startling beauty that doesn’t linger despite Phoenix’s performance.

The film is an intoxicatingly stylish but uneven blood-soaked tone poem about a hitman hired to save a teenage girl from a child-prostitution ring. It has moments of magic and ravishing imagery but feels crass and silly at times with on-the-nose flashbacks.

Joaquin Phoenix delivers a shattering performance as the damaged anti-hero Joe in this dark tale of paranoia, vengeance, and grief. Ramsay’s stylized approach, with its mix of beauty and violence plus strong sound and score, creates a moving portrait that stands apart from typical vigilante thrillers.

Lynne Ramsay delivers another blistering, daring film that echoes Taxi Driver in its raw, heart-pounding hitman thriller with Joaquin Phoenix. It is a brutal, punishing watch and masterclass in filmmaking, using sparse violence, exceptional sound design, and score to examine suffering without clichés.

The critic calls the film arguably Ramsay's masterpiece, a sustained scream that blends violence and tenderness through Phoenix's towering performance and the director's precise, ruthless craftsmanship.

The critic hails Ramsay's fourth feature as an astounding, prismatic work of pure inventive filmmaking that condenses a revenge thriller into impressionistic slivers of insight. Phoenix delivers a magnetic, nuanced performance, complemented by Greenwood's magnificent score, precise sound design, and striking incidental details that make the film both cruel and compassionate.

The critic hails the film as a thunderous achievement and masterpiece of form and performance, praising Ramsay's restraint and visual storytelling alongside Phoenix's haunting, career-highlight turn as a profoundly disturbed man.

The critic calls the film one of the best of the year, praising its sparse, less-is-more approach that trusts the audience to fill in blanks and creates a lean, mean machine of a movie. Phoenix's engrossing performance is singled out as a primary strength in this remarkable example of storytelling through omission.

The critic highlights how the film turns a familiar thriller into something unexpected through Ramsay's virtuoso formal control and Phoenix's performance, emphasizing its lesson in tweaking the familiar.

The critic praises Joaquin Phoenix's intense performance as the troubled vigilante but finds the film meandering and that Ramsay falters in the final act, though Phoenix makes it a must-see.

The critic finds Lynne Ramsay's elliptical and brutal take on the hard-boiled detective story more interesting for its style and craft than for its substance or emotional pull. They single out the film's jagged editing, Jonny Greenwood score, and inventive set pieces like the scene with the dying man, while noting it plays as a collection of accomplished moments rather than a fully satisfying whole.