You Were Never Really Here

You Were Never Really Here is a bold movie, it takes the premise of an action crime thriller and turns it into an dark introspective look at abuse, trauma and ultimately recovery.

The film follows Joe, a traumatized veteran and ex-FBI agent as he delves into the seedy world of child trafficking to find a senators lost daughter. That could literally be the plot for an action film but this movie takes that idea and twists it, to show you what it would look like in reality, which is quite brilliant.

I have to credit the film for not shying away from the topic of child trafficking. Without giving too much away it isn't afraid to show the audience the type of people involved in the child trafficking trade. High ranking politicians. It's shocking to me that this is something which is so incredibly clear to people as it is a billion dollar industry and yet its rarely on the news. Many of the people who are at the highest governmental positions in America and the UK are obviously involved in the worst kind of activity.

It's a quietly intense film and yet one that extremely violent, but the violence is real, quick and brutish. It spends a lot of time focusing on Joe's mental health during these sequences, we see how his past trauma effects his current state and how it informs how he navigates each situation he is in as he constantly makes the decision to either give in and die or to push through to the other side.

I have one very tiny criticism , i wanted ten minutes more of it..but perhaps that shows just how effective it was. The ending however is a gut punch and drives home just how important it is to him to save this little girls life. A very underrated film.