PRISONERS
Review
By
Darin Skaggs
One
of the biggest fears a parent has for their children is that they will be
taken. There is a sense of dread every
time you cannot find your child for even a split second. If they were gone what would you do to get
them back and would you stoop as low as the people committing the crimes to get
them back. Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners takes that idea on and takes
it to many larger levels.
It’s
Thanksgiving and two families have joined together, the Dovers and the Birchs. The two young girls take a trip over to the
Dover’s house to retrieve a read whistle, but they don’t come back. After looking all around the neighborhood the
families are forced to call the police.
Then Detective Loki enters, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. He does his best to get all the information on
the possible kidnapping. A furious
Keller Dover, played by Hugh Jackman, immediately clashes with Loki because he
needs to get his daughter back. The only
suspect is a mentally challenged man Alex Jones, played by Paul Dano, who was
driving a RV around the streets when the girls went missing. Alex is released from custody and then Dover
takes the situation into his own hands.
The
film tries to examine all aspects of these horrible crimes. Dover’s wife spends the majority of the film
just lying in bed, depressed. Dover himself
starts drinking heavily and Loki becomes obsessed with solving the case. It also tries to explore why someone would do
this and why someone would not admit it even if they did it or not.
This explains
why the film is so long. It needs to
know everyone’s reaction to this tragedy.
This makes the film unfocused at times from the bigger story. Also there are some twists that come out of nowhere
and some scenes that fail due to them trying to keep the mystery a
mystery.
There are a few moments that are creepy,
heartbreaking and at times too on the nose.
It has good performances especially Gyllenhaal. It was an interesting film that will probably
not make a big impact.
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