Joaquin Phoenix in You Were Never Really Here (Alison Cohen Rosa/Amazon Studios)

Film is primarily a visual medium, yet not all filmmakers take this fact and run with it. When a filmmaker comes along who clearly favors telling stories through image, it is a jolting and exhilarating reminder of what cinema can be. Director Lynne Ramsay is among the foremost visual filmmakers currently working, and her latest film, You Were Never Really Here, is unique and affecting. Based on the 2013 novella by Jonathan Ames, the film is a nightmarish, original view of New York’s underbelly, bolstered by a typically haunting yet propulsive score from Jonny Greenwood and a remarkable lead performance by Joaquin Phoenix.

Phoenix stars as Joe, a haunted, chewed up war veteran who specializes in rescuing children from sex trafficking rings. Phoenix has typically played manic, neurotic, hyper-verbal, and intellectual roles, from the bizarre, energetic Freddie Quell in The Master, to the endlessly theorizing philosophy professor Abe Lucas in Irrational Man, to the lovelorn Theodore in Her, who spends his days in dialogue with his smartphone. Joe, however, speaks in monosyllables and grunts, when he can bothers to speak at all.

Yet Phoenix communicates volumes through his brooding physicality and world-weariness leaking from every pore. Despite his haggard appearance and complete detachment from polite society, Joe is committed to his own sense of justice. While his previous manic roles make Phoenix a fit to play the Joker, his brooding, hulking work as Joe makes it clear he could easily be an excellent Batman.

In appearance, Joe reminds one of Macon Blair in Blue Ruin, and in his determination to keep pushing his scarred up, broken body to perform heroic feats he recalls Hugh Jackman in last year’s Oscar-nominated Logan. Yet the most obvious comparison is Travis Bickle, another lone wolf prowling the streets of New York in the name of protecting the young and innocent. But while Bickle transformed himself, physically and ideologically, throughout the course of Taxi Driver, Joe is the finished product from the first frame—he knows who he is and what he needs to do.

Joe is something of an antidote to the trend of hyper-competent violent hit men we see today—he is the anti-John Wick. Nor is Joe especially good at killing. He’s not Liam Neeson, and he has no particular set of skills. He’s a brute with a hammer and has a high threshold for pain. He doesn’t seem to enjoy hurting others, preferring self-harm much more. He really only seems alive when he’s hurting himself, as several eerie, recurrent scenes depicting his fascination with self-harm make clear. Phoenix, long a lithe, wiry onscreen presence, radically transformed his body for the role. He is all deltoids and traps, yet still somehow vulnerable and shattered, a hulking wound of a man, a broken-down behemoth.

The film doesn’t offer a whole lot in the way of plot or narrative complexity. Joe takes a case from his handler, John (John Doman), to track down the young daughter of a New York state senator, with extreme violence unsurprisingly ensuing. Phoenix’s engrossing performance makes up for the lack of plot—watching him breathe and bathe is somehow a journey all to itself.

Ramsey’s direction also makes small details seem astounding, like when Joe cleans up the bathroom after his senile mother makes a mess—his mopping up the wet floor turns into a transportive, surreal image. When an intense image is focused on, such as when Joe is forced to perform emergency oral surgery on himself, it is even more intense than it would be in any other filmmaker’s hands. But perhaps the most memorable sight is simply a girl eating dinner toward the end.

Somehow both a punch to the gut and a film of genuine beauty, and featuring one of the best performances in years, You Were Never Really Here is moviemaking at its finest.