Film’s powerful acting, directing, performances capture viewers
“Prisoners,” the English-language debut of Oscar-nominated director Denis Villeneuve (“Incendies”), is a crime/thriller about family, parenting, loss and faith.
Keller (Hugh Jackman) and Grace Dover (Maria Bello) take their children to have a Thanksgiving meal with their neighbors Franklin (Terrence Howard) and Nancy Birch (Viola Davis). The Dovers’ son, Ralph (Dylan Minnette), takes his younger sister, Anna, outside to play with the Birchs’ daughter, Eliza (Zoe Soul) and her younger sister, Joy.
The young children climb on a run-down RV parked outside on the street. Later, the two girls go outside to go to the Dovers’ house. Before long, the adults realize the pair has not come back and that they are missing.
Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) is called in to investigate, and he quickly arrests the driver of the RV, Alex Jones, a young man with the IQ of a 10-year-old. The RV is searched, but no traces of the girls are found.
Lacking any evidence, Alex is released a few days later to his aunt, Holly (Melissa Leo). Furious that the police released the prime suspect, Keller decides to take the situation into his own hands.
This is one of the best films of the year. Villeneuve and screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski take what is essentially a 2-and-a-half-hour episode of “Law and Order” or “Criminal Minds” and raises it to the highest level.
Every aspect of the film is top-notch. Most noticeable is the all-star cast led by the commanding and fierce Jackman as Keller.
Even in the most intense and Oscar-baiting scenes, Jackman makes the audience sink into their seats in quiet fear. His pain and grief are felt heavily, even when he makes morally corrupt decisions. Loki, an obsessive police detective who has solved all of his previous cases, is so determined to solve the abduction case that he sometimes comes off as cold and compulsive.
The film is a long 2 hours and 33 minutes, but it is so enthralling and impeccably crafted that it does not matter in the least. The extraordinary cinematographer Roger Deakins, who has shot many of Joel and Ethan Coen’s films and last year’s “Skyfall,” gives the film a dark, gray, misty look that fits with the mood of the film. It is raining in many of the scenes set outside, and the damp cold is captured well.
Many of the “best” films are heady, intellectual films that nobody goes to see and are not enjoyable in the usual sense. “Prisoners” is a superb example of a film that is intelligent and contemplative while staying entertaining. Given the subject matter, the film is grueling and grabs the audience from frame one to the vital final shot.
This is a film that must be seen from beginning to end in one sitting without interruption.