Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) is a much damaged man. He earns his living by. rescuing kidnapped children. The brutal manner in which he executes his missions, has more to do with trying to kill his own demons. The past, in split second flashbacks, is spliced with his present, his fantasies, and keeping a handle on his own mental stability that constantly teeters on the edge of breakdown. He gets a new job, to rescue a politician's abducted young daughter. She is being held and sexually abused in a guarded tenement building. He succeeds in saving her, only to find there is a much more complicated game going on here than he has been led to believe. The whole situation goes rapidly, and savagely, out of control.
This film from 2017 is a much overlooked piece of masterful noir film making by Lynn Ramsey. The opening ten to fifteen minutes is tense, ompletely without dialogue as you are introduced to Joe's completely screwed up world. The sharp editing of imagery is accompanied by an equally sharp piece of sound tracking by Jonny Greenwood that is stupendous. The best I've seen since the beginning intro to Drive. This is 'show not tell' at a whole other level. Throughout the film you are constantly made aware of Joe's mental state by the nature and quality of sound. You may be just seeing a long slow shot of Joe sat panting, but the sound track is of a discordant prepared piano as out of kilter as his mind. All the surrounding incidental sounds of a coffee percolating, passing street sounds, are woven in, all over amplified to give a palpable sense of a perceptual worldview that is completely out of whack.
It is a brave piece of filmmaking that only ever hints at why what is happening is happening. Never feeling the need to cross all the T's and dot the I's. To over explain. You are left like Joe, never fully grasping what is going on before your eyes. Ramsay helps Joaquin Phoenix deliver one of his best performances. A totally brilliant film that becomes even better on this my second viewing.
CARROT REVIEW - 8/8
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