Didn't see a post on it and it's a shame. Walked into it thinking it was going to be your generic indie remorseful hired gun movie but boy was I wrong.

It's two movies playing out at the same time. One is your Equalizer revenge type flick...a bad dude doing bad things to bad people to save innocents. This movie would be rated a hard R with absolutely no sunlight creeping in, almost misanthropic in its life view.

The other is a tale of a PTSD'ed out dude dealing with the mundanity of life...his dementia afflicted mother, constant thoughts of suicide and past abuses, etc. Every shot is perfectly framed for maximum cinematography beauty and depression, lol. Think of your oscar bait movie but one that overtly prides itself in being 'realistic' :so while they avoid the Will Smith levels of cheese at times it feels a bit disconnected.

You split one of those movies off and your in C+ movie arthouse territory. But the choices in how they mashed these ideas together...I can see people having issues with the pacing (see the description of movie 2) but overall it's a stunner. Also the soundtrack is awesome (but what do you expect from Greenwood ). Ill give it a solid B+ as long as you go in knowing its more of an arthouse movie then a NYU film student Transporter. It reminded me alot of Ramsey's other flick, "We Need To Talk About Kevin" as far as the use of flashbacks and the consistent feeling of dread. Good flick

loved the pacing, the sensorial confusion, and Joaquin (+ the girl and his mom) acted his ass off though what else is new. Kinda disagree this is Oscar bait, but maybe we have a different view of the term. Saw it in a completely empty theater last night which added to the eeriness, but somehow magnified my attention.

But you've got the same story; dude who has some extreme emotional PTSD who eventually breaks out of it through a relationship.

So you couldda had a movie that played like The Professional/Leon or Silver Linings Playbook, but it def. didn't, lol

I'm just trying to figure out the order of operations between this and Infinity War


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Surprisingly good. Saw the trailer, decided to give it a go thinking if it doesn't peek my interest in the first 20 minutes, I will watch something else. Grabbed my attention within the first 10.
Reminded me of those old school Charles Bronson revenge flicks from the 70's.Influences from Taxi Driver and Old Boy are also definitely in this. Joachim Phoenix is always great to watch but he disappears in this one. Good editing. The violence was more graphic than expected. Making good use of the music all the while not showing too much regarding the vile subject matter. It ended a lot better than I thought it was.

they made a brilliant film out of a tired ass premise...that's quite an accomplishment

and phoenix was a fucking beast in this...as a son of a single mother the scenes with his mother were a punch to the gut