An air of heaviness surrounds Prisoners: the darkness of its story, the grimness of its view of human nature, the somberness of its performances. The titular captives aren’t limited to the abducted girls at the plot’s center—in a sense, most of the characters are trapped in metaphorical prisons of one form or another. That heaviness is pungently expressed by director Denis Villeneuve without much variation or letup—and in the process, the audience gets imprisoned a bit, as well.
Running a little over two-and-a-half hours, Prisoners solemnly observes the repercussions of a kidnapping in a Pennsylvania community. Keller (Hugh Jackman), a religious man well-stocked for any possible emergency—his basement is filled with supplies, including gas masks—gets understandably alarmed when his young daughter, Anna (Erin Gerasimovich), goes missing near the end of Thanksgiving, along with her friend, Joy (Kyla Drew Simmons). His suspicions lead him to believe that a mentally slow weirdo named Alex Jones (Paul Dano) abducted them—they were playing around his RV earlier in the day—but Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), the smart, dedicated detective investigating the disappearance, is convinced that Alex doesn’t have the intellectual faculties to pull off this crime. Keller’s white-hot anger blinds him to Loki’s logic, however, and soon he’s pursuing Alex on his own, boarding him up in an abandoned building and torturing him in an effort to force him to reveal where Anna and Joy are.
With its measured pace and stark, unglamorous portrayal of violence, Prisoners wants to be more than just an escapist crime thriller—it has its sights set on loftier aspirations. Like Mystic River or Zodiac, the film is as much a commentary on evil and moral rot as it is a detective story. That’s laudable, but it’s not always effective. Though the movie has an original screenplay (from Contraband writer Aaron Guzikowski), Prisoners feels like it was based on a hefty bestseller that was full of page-turning suspense but was adapted for the screen with an eye toward making it classier and more significant.
Prisoners is the English-language debut of veteran Québécois filmmaker Villeneuve, whose previous film, the Oscar-nominated Incendies, was in its own way a mystery that revealed humanity’s darker aspects while dishing out some faintly preposterous twists. Both high-minded and pulpy, his latest movie wants to give us insights into our baser natures, but it isn’t nearly as perceptive as its makers might think.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
