Coming with a premise that at first glance seems like something you would find in a TV movie of the week, there was a risk that Prisoners could have been a dull and completely forgettable slog. Perhaps that would have been the case if this film had been in the hands of a less talented or less ambitious director but instead, we get a compelling and deeply thought-provoking beautifully shot film that comes in what has been a very insipid September.
On an otherwise normal Thanksgiving Day, the two young daughters of Keller Dover (Jackman) and Franklin Birch (Howard) suddenly disappear without a trace, shaking up a small Philadelphia town and bringing Detective Loki (Gyllenhaal) into the case. With no solid clues and the only real suspect being a man with the IQ of a 10 year old, Dover becomes convinced the man knows where his daughter is. This conviction and unrelenting belief takes Dover on a dark journey that the movie dares us to follow him on.
While this may all sound like something you would hear in a random Criminal Minds or Without a Trace episode, Prisoners takes off from this premise and doesn't play it safe or conveniently package it for audiences expecting a simple play it by the numbers thriller. Religious symbolism is rife in this film from the very onset, and the familiar words of the Lord's Prayer that you hear Jackman's character utter in the very beginning suddenly take on a very personal meaning when he says them later on. He is a man whose faith is being tested to the extreme. Not just his faith in God, but his faith in himself as a patriarch and father, and finally his faith in himself in being able to retain his humanity when all is said and done. One of the great successes in this movie is that it puts you in the uncomfortable position of being in these characters' shoes. Basic morality and the concepts of right and wrong are put into question here and we struggle with those questions much in the same way the characters do. When pushed to the extreme and feeling completely helpless, how far would you go to save the life of someone you love? How much of what makes you human and what you are would you dismantle and discard to get the answers you are looking for? Dover and the audience both ask themselves that very question.
This movie boasts a great ensemble cast, with award-winning actresses such as Melissa Leo, Viola Davis, and Maria Bello appearing in smaller roles but the clear star here is Hugh Jackman. Jackman and Gyllehnaal do share roughly the same amount of screen time but it's Jackman who has the intense and emotionally charged big showcase performance in the movie. Jackman does some of the best work of his career in a performance that makes one wish he'd stop making all of those X-Men movies and focus on more interesting roles like his one here. In one of the few negatives to be taken from Prisoners, Jake Gyllenhaal plays the rather generic tough loner cop obsessed with solving the case that we've seen a million times before.
With "Prisoners", French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve makes his first foray into bigger budget Hollywood fare and A-list casts in what could be the beginnings of a very promising next step in his career. And although "Prisoners" may not pack as much of a powerful punch as Villeneuve's brilliant "Incendies", it still remains a great follow up and all the strengths and positives that made "Incendies" so captivating are all on display here. Villeneuve develops complex believable characters that possess visible deep reservoirs of contradicting emotions with astonishing ease here and much like in "Incendies", he takes advantage of this story to explore the fabric of a family torn apart by extraordinary circumstances and their ability to overcome those obstacles.
Verdict: Villeneuve knows how to use visuals to tell a story and the atmosphere he builds in gloomy rural Pennsylvania is engrossing and captures the mood and tone of this film perfectly. We are quickly sucked in to this murky and morally ambiguous world and there is very little respite for the next two and a half hours or so of the runtime. Prisoners is a mature and riveting work that challenges its audience and avoids the pitfalls and mistakes of other films with a similar subject matter (such as Peter Jackson's inconsistent and tedious "The Lovely Bones") and elevates a simple and familiar premise into something much more substantial.
B+
Movie info:
Runtime: 153 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Screenplay: Aaron Guzikowski
Cinematography: Rogers Deakins
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