Joaquin Phoenix (above with Amy Adams) captivates as Freddie Quell, a former Naval officer who emerges from the Second World War as damaged and alien as Vietnam vet Travis Bickle.
Quell, unable to hold down a job due to his drunkenness and mental instability, stumbles one night aboard a yacht commandeered by Philip Seymour Hoffman's genial cult leader, the Master.
The horny, violent Quell becomes the Master's self-appointed henchman, and the ambiguous relationship between these two vastly different men grips in this intelligent psychodrama.
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