In one moment, he's tender and funny with his mother. She doesn't manipulate how we are supposed to feel about him. She does not sentimentalize Joe (and Joaquin Phoenix is her great partner in this). Ramsay's gift of invention is in overdrive (the title credit screen is practically worth the price of admission), and her approach is audacious. 'You Were Never Really Here' has a jittery caffeinated energy reminiscent of the great sleazeball thrillers of the 1970s and '80s, gritty New York movies, corrupt cop movies. There are obvious nods to ' Taxi Driver' in this material, as well as some nods to 'The Big Sleep,' too, with a brave lone figure strolling into an evil world where politics and sexual exploitation filter into the top echelons of society.

It's not his first time at this seedy rodeo. Joe gathers together the tools he will need. He works for a private detective as a hired gun, although his preferred weapon is a hammer (as Ames explains in the novella's typically dark laconic tone: 'Left very little evidence, excellent in close quarters, and seemed to frighten everyone.') Joe is hired to rescue a Senator's underage daughter ( Ekaterina Samsonov) from a sex trafficking ring, run out of a sleek townhouse. Joe lives at home in Brooklyn taking care of his frail elderly mother ( Judith Roberts). Awful things have occurred, but she doesn't let us see it.) (The sequence is reminiscent of the chilling opening of Ramsay's 2002 film 'Morvern Callar,' even down to the closeup of a cheap gold necklace with a girl's name in swoopy gold script.

Ramsay does not allow us to see beyond the tight periphery of the frame. We are in the aftermath of some terrible event. In the first scene, Joe is only shown in fragments: his meaty hands pick up some ominous-looking objects, a roll of duct tape, a bloody hammer.

The Darkness Outside by J.W. Lynne