“Prisoners”

Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners is the first must see film of the Fall Movie Season. It’s certainly not for everyone – the fact that it’s opening nationwide is quite ambitious – but those willing to endure 2 and ½ hours of dark, dense, and devastating material will be greatly rewarded. French director Villeneuve, Oscar nominated in 2011 for the foreign language drama Incendies, has crafted a morally complex studio film in the vein of Fincher’s Se7en and Zodiac, but the mystery here moves and unfolds more like a European art house film, taking its slow, slow time to break down its characters under an increasingly heavy, unsettling atmosphere. Warner Brothers is taking quite the chance opening this one wide but it’s a move that is as risky as it is commendable. The bottom line is that nationwide audiences need more movies like Prisoners – movies that don’t hold your hand, movies that challenge, movies that are moody, complex, and undeniably head spinning.

Hugh Jackman, soaring to new career highs after last year’s Oscar nomination for Les Miserables, stars as Keller Dover, a loving family man whose daughter, along with a neighborhood friend, goes missing on Thanksgiving. When a suspicious RV that was parked on the Dover’s street ends up crashed on the side of the highway, Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) gets pulled into the case, made all the more twisted by the appearance of a potential suspect in the RV – a nearly mute, mentally challenged boy, played with skin crawling creepiness by the great Paul Dano. Pre-release trailers alarmingly give what looks like most of the story away – particularly Keller’s decision to kidnap the suspect and torture him for answers – but there’s more to Prisoners than meets the eye. Even when the screenplay takes bumpy turns and part of the mystery begins to reveal itself, Villeneuve keeps the tension escalating by paying as much attention to the moral dynamics of the situation as he does to the “who-did-it” answer. Often, the question as to how Dover or Loki will emotionally survive this ordeal outweighs the question to who kidnapped the little girls.

Like the great French film The Vanishing, Prisoners expertly showcases different moral rationalizations that help turn the film into some kind of dizzying mindbender. Dover’s actions are quite gruesome and are obviously morally and legally wrong, but the will of a parent to do whatever it takes to protect his/her child adds deeper dimensions to the scenario. The same goes for Detective Loki, who’s trying his best to solve the case despite a police force that can only do so much when money and time are scarce. The way Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins (fresh off his Oscar nom for Skyfall) shoot and frame the picture only adds to its frustrating moral ambiguities. Deakins’ shots are not personably constructed, you’re never put inside a character’s shoes; instead, the film keeps changing perspectives and the immaculately framed still shots put you on the outside looking in and it’s uncomfortably perplexing. Luckily, the film is gorgeous looking and the way Deakins incorporates the theme of mazes into reflections, specifically car windows, is mesmerizing.

The ensemble is also sublime. As Dover’s wife, Mario Bello is tragically invalid, and the always reliable Terrence Howard and Viola Davis are quite strong as the parents of the other missing girl despite the fact that they are sidelined as the movie develops. Davis, unsurprisingly, knocks it out of the park with her humanity when she goes face to face with Dano, whose unreadable motives and slimy appearance will certainly drive some mad. Gyllenhaal is in fine form as Detective Loki, easily the film’s most intriguing character. With a nervous eye twitch and knuckle tattoos, Loki is clearly haunted, and though Gyllenhaal’s soft voice and puppy dog eyes seem too calm at first, the actor comes alive as the case takes its toll on the detective, erupting during a scene when the case seems all but closed. Ultimately this is Jackman’s show and he is unbelievably gripping here. Though he has expertly showed rage as Wolverine, the type of anger Jackman digs deep for reveals a shattered, tortured soul that becomes more gut wrenching as the film goes on. Jackman has never been more alive or broken on screen and he’s half the reason the film nails its psychological goals. You may not be able to agree with Dover’s decisions but Jackman makes you feel the justification of his actions with unshakeable force. Eventual Oscar nomination or not, this is the best work Jackson has done to date. He nails it.

I can’t say the film is perfect – an ill-advised flashback feels inorganic and forced, for instance – but Prisoners deserves praise for daring to go where most nationwide films never do. Like The Place Beyond The Pines, a specialty release earlier this spring, the film soaks in its moral questionings about human rationalizations, making its few bumps forgivable. The way characters are built but not spelled out – Gyllenhaal’s nervous ticks, Jackman’s over cautiousness (his basement has enough supplies to act as a de facto bomb shelter) – makes you crave more information about them despite their unthinkable acts. And the expert editing, stark and sudden, only adds to the movie’s puzzle – many moments are drawn out for maximum tension only to cut before the climax of the scene, causing you to play catch up time and time again and making certain plot reveals suddenly potent. I think it’s safe to say that come the brilliantly ballsy ending many will be exhausted and angry but that’s the kind of movie Prisoners is – tedious, maddening, and unrelenting.

Now that’s the Fall for you. I’m so glad it’s here.

8/10

Review by Zack Sharf