Movie review: Prisoners - no right way to do wrong

Prisoners will place you in morally murky situations and force you to make a choice.

There is no escaping from Prisoners. This masterfully directed psychological thriller from auteur Denis Villeneuve is so intense that its haunting melancholy will hold you captive long after the film ends. This will especially hold true if you are a parent, in which case the film may leave you in a temporary state of paranoia.

The film forces you to think about uncomfortable questions such as the twisted depths to which a parent will sink, in order to save their abducted child. The answers are so uneasy, and the stakes so high, that it may break a lot of your convictions.

The film stars Hugh Jackman (Keller Dover) as a religious carpenter in a powerful performance that is truly magnificent, and easily the best of his career.

The film begins with Keller, a loving father, who alongside his wife Grace (Maria Bello), son Ralph (Dylan Minnette), and daughter Anna (Erin Gerasimovich), is visiting family friends and neighbors, the Birches, for Thanksgiving dinner. After dinner, Anna asks her parents if she can leave with Joy Birch (Kyla Drew Simmons) to play at the Dover home. Anna’s parents reluctantly agree on the condition that the kids be chaperoned by their elder siblings.

What follows is a parent’s worst nightmare, and a plot ripped straight from American headlines.

After both children fail to return after some time, Keller discovers to his alarm that they left unescorted. Alongside Joy’s father, Franklin Birch (Terrence Howard), Keller frantically combs the neighborhood until he realizes the children are truly missing. The only clue the two families have is an RV, spotted outside of the Birch home while the girls were playing outside.

Coming to the aid of the desperate families is Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), who backed by the local police, manages to locate the RV. Unfortunately, the RV carries no evidence that it was involved in the abduction.

Complicating the entire situation is the fact that the driver of the RV and the primary suspect, Alex Jones (Paul Dano), is a grown man with the I.Q. of a ten-year-old. Moreover, he provides Loki with no solid reason to suspect him. After he is released, however, he tantalizingly hints to Keller privately that he knows more than he has been letting on. Keller, frustrated with the release of Alex, kidnaps him, and later with Franklin’s assistance, tortures Alex using elaborate techniques.

With his nostrils often flaring, Hugh Jackman is stunningly convincing as a desperate father who must channel his inner psychopath in order to find his daughter. You feel torn between being sympathetic towards Alex and yet being able to relate to Keller’s agony, who is also held hostage by the situation.

Gyllenhaal, playing a detective so burdened by his job that he develops a very noticeable eye twitch, delivers a particularly powerful performance. The chemistry between Jackman and Gyllenhaal is also strong, with the detective looking to rein in the impatient father’s aggression, as the two main characters engage in a tug of wills.

Prisoners is a complex multi-layered film that does justice to its multiple themes. Matching the darkness of these layers is the film’s visually intoxicating cinematography, sporting simple backdrops that are given a suitably grim look by the gritty camerawork.

Prisoners’ narrative twists and turns like a maze, featuring surprises that will leave you guessing as often as the film’s principal characters. Disappointingly, some of the major set-pieces are foreshadowed a little too well, leaving little room for surprise. That being said, after a terrorizing ride, a little cheap satisfaction is somewhat welcome.

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Silence of the Lambs (1991)



Starring Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster, the film won five academy awards, and put Hannibal Lector on the map as one of the greatest villains ever seen on film. The film started a trend, and established a blueprint for other psychological thrillers to follow.

Se7en (1995)



Starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, the film featured a richly dark narrative, and an ending that blew cinemagoers away. However what most people don’t know is that the director, David Fincher was initially sent the wrong script by mistake, but he remained adamant that the producers stuck to it.

Zodiac (2007)



Also directed by David Fincher, the film is based on a true story of a series of complex and perplexing murders which law enforcement officials to this day have not been able to solve. The killer, Zodiac, sent taunting letters to both newspapers and the police during his horrifying killing spree.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, November 3^rd, 2013.a