Violence keeps to its title as we witness a wonderfully relentless, over-the-top assault on the senses from filmmaker Connor Marsden. Who knew we needed a bit of bloody, punk-noir in our lives?

Henry Violence (Rohan Campbell), a former drug addict who has become straight-edge and moved on. He has one mission in life now: to get his former love Charlotte (Sarah Grey) out of that life and live the one she deserves. However, he becomes entangled in a brutal drug war as rival cartels battle for supremacy, forcing him to make difficult choices to navigate the treacherous landscape.

Told over a single night of gorgeous neon-tinted and bloody visuals, Violence’s order of the day was to soak itself in 80s aesthetics and sounds, and boy, does it work. Marsden has given us a film that looks and feels as if it has set itself in a mix of The Warriors and Escape From New York worlds, not only a fantastic love letter but also a great film that stands on its own stylistic punk-noir feet.

There are two things our poor Henry has to deal with: getting beaten up and harmed each way to Sunday in as many brutal ways as possible. Secondly, it is getting drenched in people’s blood (and I mean drenched). You have to let realism take a bit of a back seat in Violence as the injuries we witness Henry absorb are enough to make an 80s action hero blush.

Rohan Campbell is great here, though, while he is portrayed as a one-track-minded guy who is doing whatever he can to get his ex-girlfriend back. He also brings a vulnerability to the role that works so well, falling into that anti-hero role effortlessly. He is a character who has been at the bottom, and now that he is clear of it, he will do what he must to get the person he loves out of it too.

With Rocket (Maddie Hasson) and Bats (Tomaso Sanelli), they are souls who are on the cusp of accepting that this is their lot in life, but have one crazy idea to change everything. It’s the bleak nature of the story that allows the depth of these characters and their performances to really shine through. People who are so desperate to change their circumstances that they are willing to accept what happens to them after they succeed.

Violence isn’t overtly interested in telling us a positive story, or cares who comes out of it alive, its story is really about addiction in all of its forms, it’s a smart take that’s relentless pace gives you little time to breathe and only the chance to absorb the chaos, fantastically so.

★★★★

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