Prisoners
Director: Denis Villenuve
Writer: Aaron Guzikowski
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Hugh Jackman, Paul Dano, Terrence Howard, Viola Davis, Melissa Leo, David Dastmalchian, Maria Bello, Dylan Minnette
Reason for watching: great movie I haven’t seen before
Number of times I’ve watched it: first time viewing
***
Abducted kid stories are scarier than horror movies. Sure, there are movies with demons, monsters, freaky dudes who chase you in your dreams, or just people who like scary movies too much. But we have enough stories in the real news of predators kidnapping children to know that these scary movies mirror reality. These kids are literal prisoners, and all the others who are affected by the stories are prisoners of fear.
Plot synopsis: two little girls are kidnapped in broad day light on Thanksigiving. Father Keller Dover (Hugh JACKED-man) takes matters too far in his own hands when he tries to get information from the last person who might’ve seen his daughter alive, Alex Jones (Paul Dano). Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) (I’m not kidding his name is Loki) works as hard as he can and goes a little outside the law to find these missing girls.
There’s nothing here that Keller does that is unforgivable. Has he gone too far? Of course. I won’t spoil it, but he would be locked up himself for what he does to Alex in this movie. So are all the other reactions the characters take. The entire story is well written and feels almost too close to true. The actions our characters take show all the different ways people would respond to these circumstances. The cinematography and score add a good amount of weight to the tone that is felt. Most of the actors do a good job. No one really stands but this is a sold ensemble performance.
Conversely, no one turns up the effort like Jake Gyllenhaal when he wants to. If he was born 40 years earlier, the dude would’ve been the hugest star of the 1950’s, no question. The tone of realism is somewhat broken near the end when everything gets revealed. Don’t worry, it doesn’t jump the shark or pull a Serenity (Jane’s least favorite movie I ever took her too); but let’s just say the bad guy really is not who you expected. Plus there’s another bad guy who collects snakes and gives Detective Loki the clue that leads him to the final killer, but in the end has no real connection to the final bad guy.
In the end the thing that most impresses me about Prisoners is the range it shows for direct Denis Villenuve. This man creates tone in a way that almost no other modern director does. He imbues always manages to imbue a unique atmosphere into his movies, but this really showed how dark he can take it. Since then he worked his way up the scale of depressing to Sicario to Arrival to Blade Runner 2049. He gets better acting performances out of his other movies, but this movie is well above average and always has a stacked cast. If you wanna see how many people want to work with this guy just look up the cast for his next movie: Dune. This man has skills, and those skills are on display here as he holds us all prisoner in our seats...alright I know that was bad.
8/10
Until I see another one.