Prisoners: Movie Review

Academy Award-winning director Denis Villeneuve makes his Hollywood directorial debut with the new dramatic-thriller “Prisoners”, starring Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Maria Bello, Terrance Howard, Viola Davis, Melissa Leo, an Paul Dano. Despite some issues I had with the screenplay by Aaron Guzikowski, there is more than enough great stuff here to highly recommend “Prisoners”.

When the daughters of Keller and Grace Dover (Jackman and Bello respectively) and their friends Franklin and Nancy Birch (Howard and Davis respectively) are kidnapped, Alex Jones (Dano) is taken into custody but released due to a lack of evidence.  Alex has the I.Q. of a child which makes it hard for Detective Loki (Gyllenhaal) to believe he is mentally capable of committing such a crime.  Keller on the other hand believes that Alex did take the girls and stashed them somewhere. 

Unable to let Loki and the rest of the police do their job, Keller takes it upon himself to find out where his daughter and her friend are, by any means.  Jackman is fantastic here, giving one of his best performances to date.  He takes his character into a really dark place.  Gyllenhaal also gives one of his best performances. There are minor things about  Loki that make his character stand out.  It is obvious by the way Loki carries himself and his tattoos, that he was not always the good guy.  Also, he has a facial tic that feels like it could be caused by numerous things, but it is never brought up and I like that.

Everyone in “Prisoners” is fantastic. Even though the film runs at a whopping 150 minutes, there still feels like there are questions that needed to be answered and that is where I had some issues with the screenplay.  Despite that, this is one powerful film and I highly recommend checking it out.

By: Marc Ferman