PRISONERS : Official Reviews ( SPOILERS!!)

[jo]

Collider.com gives its view of the movie -- B minus rating -- but lauds Hugh Jackman's performance and Roger Deakins's cinematography.

collider.com/prisoners-review/

TIFF 2013: PRISONERS Review

by Matt Goldberg


There’s enough symbolism and religious themes to give Prisoners some weight. There’s enough curiosity to keep its mystery intriguing. Director Denis Villeneuve does slightly more than expected to keep us interested in its segregated storyline where one hand provides the mystery and the other hand provides some semblance. In between is a film that’s far longer than it needs to be but is supported by Roger Deakins’ striking cinematography and a great cast with a standout performance from Hugh Jackman.



Keller (Jackman) and Grace (Maria Bello) Dover are having Thanksgiving dinner at the house of their friends Franklin (Terrence Howard) and Nancy (Viola Davis) Birch. At one point in the evening, their daughters Anna (Erin Gerasimovich) and Joy (Kyla Drew Simmons), respectively, go outside to play. When the girls don’t return, a frantic hunt to find them begins. Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) leads an investigation to locate the missing girls and their kidnapper, but with each passing day, the search grows more desperate and so does Keller. In his desperation, he kidnaps and tortures potential suspect Alex Jones (Paul Dano) in the hopes of finding Anna. Meanwhile, Loki tries to piece together clues to find the true perpetrator.



Villeneuve works two sides that only cross in a functional manner. Loki is working the nuts and bolts of the investigation, and screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski’s leaves just enough breadcrumbs to keep us pecking along. It’s not a mind-blowing mystery, but it provides a serviceable whodunit to keep us moving along. Since Loki’s emotional investment is kept at a professional distance (he cares but the case isn’t consuming him, and he doesn’t have a personal life to disrupt), it’s up to the Dovers and Birches to remind us of the emotional cost.

Eventually, Grace, Franklin, and Nancy fall into the background, and Keller is driving forward a mad quest to find his daughter. Jackman provides an intense performance showcasing a rage we haven’t seen from the actor before. We’re all familiar with the Wolverine berserker, but Keller’s desperation to find Anna brings forth a fury that is even more terrifying than a character who uses metal claws to impale people. Furthemore, Keller’s actions remind us that there’s a religious undertone to the movie and that when his faith in God is tested, failing the test can lead to horrible consequences.



Nevertheless, the theme, plot, and even Jackman’s performance aren’t enough to sustain a two-and-a-half hour thriller. That’s when Roger Deakins carries the picture. Deakins is one of the best cinematographers of all time. His work is more than eye-candy—it’s effective. It’s not about the prettiest composition (although his compositions are fantastic) but finding a visual approach that draws us in whereas another director of photography may have gone for the path of least resistance or perhaps something pretty but vapid. Early in the film when Loki spots a suspicious RV during a rainstorm, Deakins paints a vivid picture as silhouettes wield flashlights that cut through a dark and stormy night. The shot conveys the dread and obfuscation that will come to define the story.

Prisoners needs the boost Deakins provides. It’s a thriller that doesn’t feel bloated as much as it overly indulges the plot of a slightly above-average mystery. It loads up on the technical aspects, a talented cast, and checks off boxes to gussy up its genre trappings. There’s nothing wrong with trying to excel at the expected rather than transcend it, but Villeneuve’s embellishments are mostly superficial. They make for a moderately compelling mystery, a moderately thoughtful drama, and a moderately successful effort.

Rating: B-

[jo]

Not a full review, but tweets from the Managing Editor of INDIEWIRE --

Nigel M. Smith‏@nigelmfs2h
Hugh Jackman gives the best, most immersive performance of his career in PRISONERS. Left me stunned and heartbroken. #TIFF13

from Toronto, Ontario Reply




Nigel M. Smith‏@nigelmfs2h
PRISONERS is a total triumph for Villeneuve and co. -- and the best thriller I've seen since Fincher's TATOO. Hooks you and doesn't let go.

from Toronto, Ontario

[jo]

Entertainment Weekly gives PRISONERS an "A" rating --

www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20483133_20721902,00.html

Movie Review

Prisoners (2013)


''Prisoners is rooted in 40 years of Hollywood revenge films, yet it also breaks audacious new ground.''
MPAA Rating: R
Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman on Sep 06, 2013@OwenGleiberman

EW's GRADE
A

Details Release Date: Sep 20, 2013; Rated: R; Length: 146 Minutes; Genre: Drama; With: Paul Dano, Jake Gyllenhaal, Hugh Jackman and Melissa Leo; Distributor: Warner Bros.

In movies like Death Wish (1974), where Charles Bronson played a walking statue of stoic wrath, vigilante justice is mean and nasty, and it’s also good, clean, righteous fun. But then there’s the kind of movie, like Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1971), that salutes lone-wolf vengeance and, at the same time, makes you feel the spiritual toll it takes — the thriller that's exciting, cathartic, and powerfully disturbing. Prisoners is that type of movie. It's rooted in 40 years of Hollywood revenge films, yet it also breaks audacious new ground.

The film stars Hugh Jackman as Keller Dover, a brawny survivalist who is also a gentle-voiced suburban dad. On a rainy Thanksgiving afternoon, Keller brings his wife (Mario Bello) and kids over to the home of neighborhood friends (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis). The two families eat, drink, and joke around, and nothing too remarkable happens — until everyone realizes that Keller’s little daughter, Anna (Erin Gerasimovich), has left the house and disappeared, along with the other family’s daughter, Joy (Kyla Drew Simmons). A search turns up nothing, but later that night, the police find a pale, mostly mute young creep (Paul Dano) in smudged aviator frames and oily long hair hanging around in his skeevy RV camper — the same vehicle that the girls were trying to crawl up the ladder of that afternoon. The cops arrest this damaged-looking sad sack, interrogate him, and find no evidence. So they let him go. But Keller, after an encounter with the suspect outside the police station, is convinced that he’s guilty. So he takes action. He kidnaps the creep, brings him to an abandoned apartment building, and beats him to a bloody pulp, over and over again. He threatens to kill the young man unless he confesses. But the suspect/victim says nothing.

If he is, in fact, innocent, then what Keller is doing is an unholy atrocity. But what if he’s guilty? Are Keller’s one-man torture-squad tactics justified then? And what if many people (along with the law) would declare that no, those tactics are still not justified? What should Keller do, given that every bone in his body is telling him that this is the only way he’ll ever see his daughter again? What if every bone in his body is right?

Prisoners, directed by Denis Villeneuve (Incendies) from a script by Aaron Guzikowski, is no shallow payback thriller. It’s a dazzingly potent, ambitious, and complex movie, a film that forces you to ask questions that have no easy answers. What I’ve described is merely the film’s first act. There are a great many twists and turns — both suspenseful and thematic — to come. Yet at the heart of Prisoners is something primitive and elemental and gripping, an obsession with torture, morality, and the impotence of the justice system that speaks to our time as intensely (and maybe controversially) as the pitch-dark vigilante thrillers of the '70s once spoke to theirs.

Jackman, in a staggering performance that's unlike anything he has done before, acts with an unbridled rage, and he invests every snarl and rasp of that anger with meaning. Keller knows that in missing-child cases, each day the victim doesn't turn up radically increases the chances that she never will, and so his fury, even at its craziest, comes off as a desperate display of committed action. Haunted by what might be happening to his daughter, he has — at least in his own mind — transcended the law, yet that leaves him with nothing to believe in but himself, and Jackman takes us on every step of that brave, terrible journey. Each of the film's major performances is powerful. As the cop heading up the investigation, Jake Gyllenhaal has a moody, badass danger that all but redefines him as an actor (for the first time, he doesn't seem like too nice a guy), and Melissa Leo, as the suspect's mother, unnerves you with the sinister banality of her homepsun Middle American quirkiness. She's the nightmare mom next door.

In its treatment of torture as a means to an end, Prisoners is very much a post-Zero Dark Thirty movie, even if the sin at its heart is child abduction rather than terrorism. Keller’s remorseless treatment of his suspect echoes America’s treatment of its captives at Abu Ghraib and other hidden locales after 9/11. Only this time it’s personal: a desperate father out to save his daughter. Prisoners takes the mythic simplicity of the vigilante film and adds arresting layers of ambiguity. Watching the movie, we behold Keller’s actions and feel that they may be horribly unjustified — a daring place for a film to put its hero — and we also behold his actions and feel that they may be what true morality demands. It’s a sign of the film’s power that either scenario could turn out to be true, and that each one is just as scary. A

This review by a mass appeal entertainment site should boost the box office appeal of PRISONERS! The movie could very well be both an artistic and a commercial hit despite its dark subject. It is also another review that recognizes Hugh Jackman's outstanding performance! Can the award bodies ignore his portrayal, called " a staggering performance" in the above EW review ??

Jo

[jo]

Richard Corliss, of TIME, disses another Jackman movie --

entertainment.time.com/2013/09/07/hugh-jackman-and-jake-gyllenhaal-in-prisoners-dont-buy-the-hype/

Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal in Prisoners: Don’t Buy the Hype

Big stars coin heavy emoting can't save this ambitious crime drama from its slow walk to mediocrity

By Richard Corliss Sept. 07, 2013Add a Comment


If the Toronto International Film Festival had a first name, it would be Oscar. And its middle name would be Hype. The five most recent winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture (Slumdog Millionaire, The Hurt Locker, The King’s Speech, The Artist and Argo) all received their official North American premieres at the TIFF. So on the front-loaded opening weekend. you can’t swing a cat — or a Crash, another Best Picture that premiered here — without hitting a sizable sonic wall of O.B.: Oscar buzz.

It begins with the cheers that greet famous actors striding onstage, often a half-hour after showtime, to promote their new movie; last night, at the debuts of Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave and Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners, the assembled stars included Brad Pitt, Alfre Woodard, Jake Gyllenhaal, Hugh Jackman, Terrence Howard and Melissa Leo — all Oscar winners or nominees — joined by designated U.K. hunks Michael Fassbender (Magneto!) and Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock Holmes!) and, twice, Paul Dano (he was in both movies). The O.B. reaches its TIFF climax with the thunderclap of audience approval as the closing credits start to roll. It spreads southward as critics chip in with their encomiums; the studios maneuver their actors through TV interviews; and, voilà!, by November an awards campaign is spawned.

Simple math teaches that there are more movies with Oscar Buzz than movies with actual Oscars, so some of this hype must fall on fallow ground. And, truth to tell, an Oscar-winning film is not always a good one. So whatever the ultimate disposition of Prisoners, at the box office or in the Academy, we have to play Cassandra: Don’t buy the hype.

A family-drama crime thriller, Prisoners fits the TIFF formula of artistic ambition plus star quality. It presents Jackman, your favorite Jean Valjean and Wolverine, turning from two types of Big Movie to a seemingly small one: a naturalistic film in which he plays Just a guy named Keller Dover. Keller lives in small-town Pennsylvania with his wife Grace (Maria Bello), their teen son Ralph (Dylan Minnette) and younger daughter Anna (Erin Gerasimovich), whose best friend is Joy Birch (Kyla Drew Simmons), daughter of their neighbors Nancy and Franklin (Davis and Davis).

Anna and Joy disappear shortly after Ralph notices a strange van parked on their block. The local cop, Loki (Gyllenhaal), apprehends the van’s driver Alex Jones (Dano), a shy, creepy loner, and after questioning, lets him return to the home of his stern Aunt Holly (Leo). That’s when Keller shifts from ordinary Joe to righteous or demented avenger. He kidnaps the kidnap suspect and tries to torture a confession from him.

For years, Aaron Guzikowski’s script was one of those inside-Hollywood-famous unproduced screenplays. It pushes familiarly grisly serial-killer tropes in a couple of novel directions; if you anticipate the film’s ending, you’re way ahead of us. And it achieves its art-house bona fides by borrowing from the vengeful-parent motif of the 2001 In the Bedroom. The project might have seemed perfect for David Fincher — except that Fincher had already made two similar films, Se7en and Zodiac. (Gyllenhaal more or less reprises his Zodiac character here: a sleuth obsessed with heinous crimes.)

So the job went to Villeneuve, who snagged a Foreign Film Oscar nomination for Incendies, another, better drama about mortal family secrets. Watching Prisoners, you can detect the clever, comely outline of Guzikowski’s script inside the flab and pretension of Villeneuve’s directorial decisions.

The movie, which clocks in at nearly two-and-a-half hours, is maybe 40 mins. longer than it needs be. The needless padding comes from the actors repeating essential lines of dialogue two or three times — you know, because that’s what real people do. (But do they? And, in a movie, should they?) The stars get to vent anger, but only in clichés: Jackman smashes things; Gyllenhaal trashes his office desk.

In a nod to the clichés of mainstream movies, Prisoners has a climactic chase scene, en route to a hospital; apparently Loki is the only cop in Pennsylvania, and, even though grievously wounded, cannot call on reserves to help him. And when the film should be tightening the narrative screws, it allows itself grand-opera delusions, giving virtually every major character a final verbal aria. Perhaps Villeneuve was paid by the number of minutes in the release print.

Among the actors, Leo steals scenes with her usual steely resolve. Dano pumps his whiny-disturbed persona (also on gaudy display in 12 Years a Slave) to a new register, and it works. David Dastmalchian is excellent — chatty, modest with some subtle telltale psychopathy, as one of the kidnap suspects. And Gyllenhaal does Gyllenhaal; he’s good at that. (The African-American actors are given little of import to work with; they are the merest black herrings.)

Jackman tries hard to fit his outside frame into a common-man mold, and then into a creature who may be as deranged as any child molester, but he is saddled with ludicrous lines — such as when he whacks Alex and screams, “Why are you making me do this?” — to drive home the point that we are all prisoners of our psyches. Maybe if he sang it, like Jean Valjean…

We’re not saying that Prisoners won’t find admirers when it opens in real theaters in two weeks. It may be a beneficiary of the famous TIFF O.B. But this is the rough cut of a good movie, and a splendid opportunity wasted.

I don't find anything amusing about the reference to a sung-through musical.

Btw, do people still read TIME? It's been a long time since I had last leafed through an issue. Newsweek has already gone out of print publication.

Jo

[jo]

From ComingSoon.net --

www.comingsoon.net/news/reviewsnews.php?id=108651

TIFF Review: Prisoners
Reviewed by: Edward Douglas
Rating: 8 out of 10




Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Story:
On Thanksgiving Day, two young girls vanish, sending both their families into a tailspin as local detective Jacob Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) tries to find someone who can provide any information to where they are and if they're still alive. Frustrated and angry with the inability of the police to solve the case, the girls' fathers (Hugh Jackman, Terrence Howard) kidnap the primary suspect (Paul Dano) and put him through rigorous tortures trying to get him to talk so that they can find their daughters before it's too late.

Analysis:
"Prisoners," the first studio film from French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve ("Incendies"), plays around with various thriller sub-genres that have gone through peaks and valleys of popularity in recent years while filling the film with enough drama so that it never feels like a straight genre film. The result ends up falling somewhere between Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River" and David Fincher's "Zodiac" in terms of its mix of drama and tension, which is not a bad place to start with for this sort of film.

The movie doesn't waste any time getting to the main plot with the families of Hugh Jackman's Keller and Terrence Howard's Franklin meeting for Thanksgiving dinner and the two young girls from within each family vanishing after being seen playing on an RV camper driven by Paul Dano's Alex Jones. Local detective Jacob Loki (Gyllenhaal) finds and questions Jones, only to realize the troubled man has the mental capacity of a 10-year-old and couldn't possibly commit the crimes he's suspected of doing. When Jones is released from jail, the angry Keller stalks and kidnaps him, chaining him to a radiator in his old house with plans to do whatever it takes to get him to talk. With Jones missing, Loki continues to work on the case trying to find anyone who might know the whereabouts of the two girls as Keller and his friend Franklin's tortures become more extreme.

Roughly a half hour into the movie, once Alex is taken hostage, you might think we're going to spend the rest of the film watching these two fathers beating this mentally-challenged soul within an inch of his life. If you've already watched the trailer for "Prisoners," you certainly might think you already know what's going to happen. In fact, and this isn't spoiling anything, the trailer mostly covers what happens in the first 20 to 30 minutes of the movie and there's literally two more hours of storytelling where a lot happens. This includes seeming tangents that may or may not have a direct correlation to the overall plot such as Loki, while checking in on local sex offenders, finding a drunken priest with a decaying corpse in his basement. Not knowing what's going to happen definitely works to "Prisoners'" advantage although it's hard to write about it without potentially spoiling any of the many red herrings and surprise twists that come to the fore over the course of unveiling the mystery behind the girls' disappearance.

Another thing Villeneuve has going for him is his terrific cast, each of them being perfectly suited for their respective roles. Keller Dover is an interesting choice for Jackman, not being your typical protagonist because you can't always, if ever, get behind what he is doing. The film certainly raises questions about right and wrong as we watch Keller's tortures of Alex escalate, especially as we follow Gyllenhaal's Detective Loki trying to solve the case and find other possible suspects and motives. For the most part, Gyllenhaal's part of the film is infinitely more interesting as we watch him sneaking into houses, not knowing what to expect, one of the aspects of the film that harks back to "Zodiac." He's certainly created an interesting character, covered in tattoos with a persistent eye twitch that reflects a dark past we can only imagine. By comparison, there are moments when Jackman's performance seems a little false because he often takes things over the top, needlessly raising his voice to create more of an impact in his scenes.

As Keller's wife, Maria Bello spends much of the film in bed drugged up and crying, while Viola Davis gets a little more proactive in her husband Franklin's attempts at getting information, although neither actress is allowed many shining moments. On the other hand, you have Melissa Leo, once again almost unrecognizable as Alex's Aunt, who as with everything and everyone else, seems to play a smaller role in the overall story until later on.

The moody tone created by Villeneuve is underscored by the film's recurring religious themes and symbolism, right from opening with Keller reciting the Lord's Prayer. While religion certainly plays a large part in the story, it never feels as if you're being hit over the head with it even with an organ-heavy score that sounds like it could accompany a church hymnal. As many surprises as "Prisoners" offers, one thing that won't come as much of a shock is how good every shot and scene looks thanks to Oscar-nominated cinematographer Roger Deakins.

Somehow the film is able to pull together all the diverse elements introduced during its first 90 minutes into a riveting last act�despite the long running time, you never really feel as if you've invested two and a half hours of your time because so much happens�though the way the film ends may frustrate a few viewers, going for the "you decide what happens next" ending rather than resolving everything with a nice tightly-knit bow.

The Bottom Line:
"Prisoners" offers strong drama, suspense and intrigue within a crime thriller that constantly leaves you guessing where it's going and rarely follows typical genre formulas. Much of that can be credited to Villeneuve's masterful direction of his cast in realizing a particularly intricate script.

[klenotka]

It is interesting that in last year´s overhyped Silver Linings Playbook, most characters YELLED half of a movie, which was inccredibly annoying and yet, it is a problem here for someone? I don´t understand it.

[Jamie]

Sept 7, 2013 15:33:40 GMT -5 klenotka said:

It is interesting that in last year´s overhyped Silver Linings Playbook, most characters YELLED half of a movie, which was incredibly annoying and yet, it is a problem here for someone? I don´t understand it.

I've been watching all the tweets from the critics and film bloggers. Even the ones who praised Hugh and the movie don't mention him in their consensus of likely nominees for Best Actor. You almost wonder if they resist his obvious talent simply because he is so universally praised by everyone who works with him and his fan base adores him. Is it possible to be too nice or too well loved?

[birchie]

Sept 7, 2013 14:43:12 GMT -5 jo said:

Richard Corliss, of TIME, disses another Jackman movie --

entertainment.time.com/2013/09/07/hugh-jackman-and-jake-gyllenhaal-in-prisoners-dont-buy-the-hype/

<snip>
I don't find anything amusing about the reference to a sung-through musical.

Btw, do people still read TIME? It's been a long time since I had last leafed through an issue. Newsweek has already gone out of print publication.

Jo

As you know I try not to read a lot of reviews cause they make me crazy ...but I did read that one. (Usually I just read the parts you highlight and your notes.) Anyway, he's a jerk and I even left a comment on his review. According to his bio he's been doing it since 1980 but I'm not familiar with how he usually reviews things. He didn't strike me as someone who likes actors or movies, but maybe he's just gotten old and cynical or he's too in love with his own words. It strikes me as odd that just a couple of these rate the movie so low compared with the majority that I've seen. Maybe some of them just like going against the tide.
PS: I don't read Time anymore either LOL!
Sue

[birchie]

Sept 7, 2013 17:42:21 GMT -5 Jamie said:

Sept 7, 2013 15:33:40 GMT -5 klenotka said:

It is interesting that in last year´s overhyped Silver Linings Playbook, most characters YELLED half of a movie, which was incredibly annoying and yet, it is a problem here for someone? I don´t understand it.

I've been watching all the tweets from the critics and film bloggers. Even the ones who praised Hugh and the movie don't mention him in their consensus of likely nominees for Best Actor. You almost wonder if they resist his obvious talent simply because he is so universally praised by everyone who works with him and his fan base adores him. Is it possible to be too nice or too well loved?

Who knows why certain actors get overlooked for Oscars. I've wondered about that many times. This list shows quite a lot of very well known actors who have been snubbed and some not even ever nominated. Some of the names may be surprising.
www.filmsite.org/noawards3.html#4
Sue

[jo]

He is popular, he is well-loved, but...

He's still Wolverine...and he's still a song and dance guy smiley-rolleyes010 <rant>


Although he did get that Les Miserables nod -- what can be more serious than bringing to life the enduring story of Jean Valjean??

Jo

[jo]

And yet -- look at how much regard and respect he gains from his co-workers.

THReporter interviewed Hugh and Jake ( someone calls them punningly as Jack and Gyll <anyone> ) -- and the regard for him shows.

www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/jake-gyllenhaal-reveals-why-he-623688

Do you remember how many tweets from Russell Crowe we read about what he thought of his co-star? The ultimate one was the tweet where he said he is voting for Hugh as Best Actor because of " the character arc and the degree of difficulty " that Hugh was faced with when portraying the role of Valjean. It was purely from a professional point of view, which is as it should be!

Jo

[jo]

Brad Brevet of ROPE OF SILICON grades PRISONERS with a "B plus" --


www.ropeofsilicon.com/prisoners-movie-review-2013-toronto-film-festival/

'Prisoners' (2013) Movie Review - Toronto Film Festival

Powerful performances conspire in this emotionally complex and effectively dark thriller

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Sunday, September 8th 2013 at 9:00 AM

Your child has been kidnapped and a suspect has been brought in for questioning. His battered RV was parked in your neighborhood around the same time your 6-year-old daughter went missing. After a couple of days, several rounds of questioning and a lie detector test it's determined he wasn't involved and is released. No other suspects exist, your girl is still missing and your spouse is a blubbering mess. What do you do?


"Prisoners" is a Warner Bros. release, directed by Denis Villeneuve and is rated R for disturbing violent content including torture, and language throughout. The running time is 2 hours 26 minutes.

The cast includes Hugh Jackman, Melissa Leo, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, Viola Davis, Maria Bello and Terrence Howard.


Prepare for dark territory with Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners, a film where one father offers his response to the question above as an increasingly mysterious case surrounding his daughter's disappearance unfolds. In terms of tone, Prisoners is operating on the same dark level as David Fincher's Zodiac and Roger Deakins delivers some of the best cinematography of his career, turning something as trivial as a car coming to a curbside stop into a foreboding dolly shot. Even tree bark offers up riddles of its own.

Set during the grey and gloomy months of a Pennsylvanian November, we're introduced to Keller and Grave Dover (Hugh Jackman and Maria Bello) and Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis) and their respective families. It's Thanksgiving and as the day wears the two soon-to-be victims ask if they can briefly run back to the Dovers'. Permission is granted, but not without their big brother and sister. The exception is noted, but not obeyed. They head back alone. They don't come back.

After an exhaustive search, the only suspect is the curious driver of the aforementioned RV, Alex Jones (Paul Dano). Greasy and soft-spoken, Alex has the IQ of a ten-year-old and claims to have no knowledge of the children's whereabouts and is eventually allowed to go home with his adoptive mother (Melissa Leo). As you may guess, this doesn't go over too well with the little girls' parents, Keller in particular.

Jackman is rage personified. Any one of his incarnations as the comic book antihero Wolverine would run from Keller Dover. He's a father that will stop at nothing to get his little girl back and God be with anyone that gets in his way.

On the other side of the story is Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), a man whose personal life is a bit more grey. Initially seen alone in a diner on Thanksgiving night, he gets the call to investigate Alex's RV parked near a wooded area. His methods seem sound and he's determined to get the two missing girls back, but there's nothing he can say or do that will convince Keller absolutely everything is being done.

For those that have seen the trailer and believe the film has been spoiled, it hasn't. The latter half offers a lot more to chew on including turns in the narrative and questions of morality that are both answered and left open to interpretation. To top it off, the performances across the board are stellar with Jackman and Gyllenhaal offering some of the best work I've seen from either of them, both worthy of Oscar attention. Jackman especially deserving of consideration along with a sneaky little gem of a performance from Melissa Leo.

Along with the cinematography from Deakins, which is sure to earn him his 11th Oscar nomination, the score from little known Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, contributing for the first time to a major motion picture, brings a heightened level of menace to Deakins' cool greys and rain soaked pavement.

There is something, however, about Prisoners that keeps me from really falling for it and I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it has to do with the overall efficiency of Villeneuve's direction, opposite a few coincidences that come up over the course of the nearly 150-minute running time that contradict how effective the rest of the film is. It's not fair, but the film is almost a victim of its own success in this case. Minor details end up amplified as a result, but given the complexity of the narrative, the performances, exceedingly high level of filmmaking and the balance of emotions, Prisoners is not a film to be missed.


GRADE: B+

[jo]

Another very positive review -- 4.5 out of 5 stars


entertainment.ie/movie-review/Prisoners/189880.htm

Prisoners

Director: Denis Villeneuve


Actors: Hugh Jackman Jake Gyllenhaal Viola Davis

Genre: Crime, Drama
Cert: 15A
Details: US/ 158 mins

.
Sometimes you look at the plot synopsis or the trailer for a movie, and figure you've got it pretty much figured out already, and some way or another, it manages to completely blind-side you. That is exactly the case with Prisoners, as you won't be prepared for just how far into the darkness this movie is going to take you.

It's Thanksgiving, and Keller (Hugh Jackman), Grace (Maria Bello) and their kids are heading over to their neighbours Franklin (Terence Howard) and Nancy's (Viola Davis) to celebrate. While the adults are relaxing, their kids are out playing, and it's not long before they're being missed. A quick search later, and the police are called in, with prime suspect Alex Jones (Paul Dano) being questioned by Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), but with no evidence to hold him, he is released from custody. But Franklin, torn up inside by distress, has alternative plans for Alex.



From this point on, every time you think you've got a handle on where the film is going, it pulls the rug out from under you, and manages to remain one step ahead for most of its running time. Delving into the depths that good people will go to in order to stop evil, as well as the different ways that people react to a horrific situation, Prisoners will put your emotion responses through the trenches, making you question and double-guess who you should be rooting behind.

There are some little niggly points throughout – at just over two and a half hours there feels like there's about ten minutes of fat in there somewhere, and some of the plot points blur the lines between serious police procedural drama and pulpy crime thriller – but they are constantly being overshadowed by the career best performances by Jackman and Gyllenhaal, and the absolutely gorgeous cinematography by Roger Deakins.

This is the English language debut of Denis Villeneuve, and we can't wait to see what he does next. An utterly compelling, engrossing, beautiful and unsettling film, Prisoners is one of the best movies of the year.

Review by Rory Cashin | 11:05 | Friday 4th October 2013 | Movie Review

[jo]

Another review which cites Hugh's performance --

www.killerreviews.com/forums/content.php?404-TIFF-Movie-Review-Prisoners-2013

TIFF Movie Review: Prisoners (2013)

by
GregMO ROberts


Toronto International Film Festival 2013 | Prisoners (2013)

Prisoners, the new film from Canadian director Denis Villeneuve (Polytechnique), is a top notch nail-biting crime-drama that is as good a theatre as modern Hollywood has the ability to produce.

Hugh Jackman and Maria Bello play the parental figures of the Dover family. They are your average hard-working blue-collar family who begin their story by visiting neighbours Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis) for a Thanksgiving dinner.

The Franklins and the Dover’s each have two children, the youngest of which (Anna and Joy) head out from their home on a November afternoon to play only to mysteriously disappear.

Upon a frantic search, the Franklins and the Dover’s suspect the worse. Especially when their elder children tell them of a mysterious camper that was parked just down the street. Police soon find the camper with Alex Jones (Paul Dano) behind the wheel. Alex has the mentality of a 10-year-old and tries fleeing when surrounded by authorities. But when Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) begins to interrogate Alex, he is less convinced that Alex was a part of the abduction. As days pass, Loki and Keller Doller work in opposite directions on the investigation. Keller is convinced that Alex Jones was a part of the abduction and kidnaps the frail and challenged Jones and tortures him for days in an attempt to extract answers. Meanwhile, Detective Loki follows leads that open up possibilities of a crime where multiple persons may be involved. And Oscar nominee Melissa Leo appears in a supporting but pivotal role that will assist in the closure.

The trailer for Prisoners may have audiences harkening back to Ron Howard’s Ransom, but this is hardly the cookie-cutter kidnapping film that Mel Gibson lead back in 1996. Prisoners instead is an engulfing drama. One with a superb performance by lead Hugh Jackman that challenges how far someone would/should go in an effort to locate their stolen child.

The script, from writer Aaron Guzikowski (Contrband) takes audiences down many different paths and emotional rides and Jackman’s performance will have you rooting for his quest for answers even though his methods are unorthodox and highly illegal.

The film is gritty and full of realistic characters and situations culminating in a perfect ending that goes 9/10ths of the way in giving its audience full closure. Not as much an edge-of-your seat thriller as it is a Zodiac type of crime drama where the stakes are the lives of two small children.

Denis Villeneuve’s last effort, Incendies, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2011. Prisoners shows that he can move solidly into big star larger scaled films with the ease of a well worn slipper. And Prisoners catapults Villeneuve into not just a director to watch, but a director whose work should be awaited with palpable excitement.

[jo]

A review from a German site --

www.cinetastic.de/2013/09/prisoners/

(You can use a translator if you want to see the detailed review in English)


The review rates the film at 8.5 of 10 stars and cites the performances of Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal and Paul Dano.


Jo

[jo]

Not as impressed -- a rating of 2.5 out of 4 stars

www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2013/09/tiff-13-prisoners.html

[jo]

www.modernsuperior.com/2013/09/07/tiff-2013-denis-villeneuves-prisoners/

TIFF 2013: Denis Villeneuve’s Intense and Bleak “Prisoners”

Released on September 7th, 2013 ˑ Leave a Comment



I started off my fairly light TIFF 2013 season this year with a film that was anything but light viewing - Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners. At around 150 minutes long, it wasn’t exactly a movie that would ease me into the festival easily – but hey, at least the rainy weather matched the tone of the film.

Villeneuve’s film is a thoroughly bleak, noir-esque thriller that tracks the actions of two Pennsylvania families, each dealing with the kidnapping of their youngest child. Hugh Jackman and Maria Bello are Keller and Grace Dover, who walk their teenage son and 7-year old daughter down a suburban street to the home of Nancy and Franklin Birch – played by Terrance Howard and Viola Davis – for Thanksgiving dinner. When the young daughters both disappear after venturing outside unattended, Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) steps in to lead the investigation. His biggest suspect is Alex Jones (Paul Dano), who owns an RV the children were last seen playing on. Jones gets let off early through a technicality though, and this spurs action – most specifically from Keller, who will stop at nothing to get his daughter back.

Those of you who have seen the trailers for Prisoners know where this is going, as many people have worried that the advertisements give away far too much of the plot. I had a similar worry when entering the theater, but now that I’ve seen the film I can tell you that there is much, much more to the story than the trailer presents. Yes, Aaron Guzikowski‘s script does delve into the lengths that these seemingly average family members will go to in order to find their children, but where this plot device takes the film is left largely uncovered in the promotional material. There’s a lot to delve into within Prisoners, with themes ranging from sin and spirituality, to vulnerability and of course prisoners – which there are multiple forms of at play here. I won’t get too deep into it, as I’m still sorting my own thoughts out on the film, but there’s certainly a lot to absorb and analyze, and I look forward to doing that.



Hugh Jackman and Paul Dano put in the powerhouse performances that Prisoners hinges upon; Jackman’s Keller is prone to bursts of screen-peelingly intense dramatics that will leave you gobsmacked, while Paul Dano disappears into Alex Jones – lending a quiet brilliance to his mannerisms and tics. Gyllenhaal is no slouch here either, though while some may reach for Zodiac comparisons, his Loki is a different beast altogether. The supporting cast remains solid throughout – though some of Terrance Howard and Maria Bello’s individual scenes and dialogue didn’t land perfectly in my opinion.

It’s also a shame that by the final reel, some minor issues arise; coincidences, fumbled plot minutiae and thriller clichés begin to rear their ugly heads. Especially odd is that the film’s opening half handles tiny, emotional details so perfectly, while the final act seems to bumble some smaller moments with borderline expository dialogue.

Thankfully, Villeneuve’s expert hand at creating nail-bitingly tense scenes and the aforementioned performances really hold the entire picture together – stopping any of these issues from becoming a major hindrance. His knack for summoning up suspense and tension that you can feel in your gut is truly unmatched. When coupled with Roger Deakins’ incredible, pitch perfect cinematography, you have a thriller that will no doubt rank as one of the better pictures this year. I’m looking forward to revisiting it already, in hopes to sort through all the details and see if the picture continues to coalesce upon multiple views or if the minor problems I had will reveal themselves to be bigger issues.

[jo]

Another very impressed reviewer -- 4.5 out of 5

whatculture.com/film/toronto-2013-prisoners-review.php#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=toronto-2013-prisoners-review

Toronto 2013: Prisoners Review

September 12, 2013
Christopher Lominac

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Prisoners tells the story of two suburban Pennsylvania families (Pennsylvania by license plates, but actually Georgia by shooting location) who during a Thanksgiving celebration at one of the family’s houses, lose track of their two young daughters. At first the families figure the girls have simply wondered off somewhere in the neighborhood, but as time goes by and the families search for the girls to no avail, panic starts to set in. Then, when one of the girls’ older brother remembers seeing an awkward looking mobile home parked outside the neighborhood, the families get the police involved.

The police, with Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) at the helm, quickly find the mobile home in question parked outside a gas station. As they cautiously approach the vehicle, it starts moving erratically and accidentally ends up crashing into a tree right in front of it. The police hurriedly arrest the young man behind wheel, a semi-mentally handicapped boy by the name of Alex Jones (Paul Dano)

The police soon find out that questioning the suspect is futile, as he refuses to answer any questions and it is unclear if he even understands what is being asked of him. With lack of evidence and no progress being made through interrogation, the police are forced to let Jones go, much to the dismay of one the girls’ father, Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman). Convinced beyond all certainty that Alex knows what has happened to his daughter, Dover takes the law into his own hands and kidnaps the boy, handcuffing Jones to a sink in an abandoned house and using his own brand of forceful interrogation.



Lest you feel I broke the cardinal rule of internet reviews and forgot to put a spoiler alert before giving you this synopsis, don’t worry, I haven’t spoiled anything. In fact, I have revealed nothing that hasn’t already be shown in the trailer for the film, but many have also complained that the trailer itself gives away too much. Don’t worry, it doesn’t . This movie is so much more than the glimpses we have been allowed to see, both literally, in terms of what actually happens in the story, and figuratively, because Prisoners is a strikingly stark thriller whose psychological effects on the audience goes far beyond the specifics of the plot.

Prisoners is firmly in the vein of the underappreciated suspense-drama genre. The genre is a personal favorite of mine and even though it is all too commonly filled with cheap exploitative schlock that solely relies on labyrinthine narrative machinations to keep its audience engaged, when it is done right, there is nary a film that can mesmerize and keep you on the edge of your seat like the well-crafted thriller. Prisoners, I am happy to say, is a fine example of the genre done right.

Many have compared the film to David Fincher’s excellent Zodiac, and it’s a fair comparison, but I think the more apt synonymous cinematic experience would be Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-nominated Mystic River. Both film’s meticulously deal with the devastation that befalls a family when one of their children go missing, and specifically, the films deal with the lengths that the family’s patriarch will go to in order to save their children or deliver them justice. Prisoners, in particular, deals heavily in religious themes such as redemption, judgment, and forgiveness, as well as serving as sly, light-footed political commentary.

While some may revel in the subtext of Denis Villeneuve’s film, what struck me most about Prisoners is its style. The film is brutally uncompromising in its cold, steely, utterly objective point-of-view in which it lets the story proceed. The film never blinks from this intense stare, never succumbing to the temptation to manipulate, and the result is a solid gut punch to the soul.

Now, a huge reason why this works so well (and I’m talking over 50% here) is because of the beautiful aesthetic look of the movie created by legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins. A ten-time Oscar nominee (but shamelessly never a winner), Deakins is most famous for his wonderful collaborations with the Coen Brothers, but his work with Villeneuve is at least on par with anything he has done with the famous filmmaking siblings. While my luddite-leaning sympathies has made me wary of the inevitable conversion from film to digital, in this one film Deakins proves (at least in my mind) that if guided by a talented DP, digital lensing can be just as effective as analog film. Even though the film takes place in a contemporary setting and doesn’t include majestic landscapes, I hope the Academy recognizes the brilliance of this work and nominates him for an eleventh nomination.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the terrific performances of the two male leads in the film. A lot of praise has been heaped on Hugh Jackman’s performance as a distraught father who goes to extreme lengths and abandons all morality in order to save his daughter, and the kudos are well deserved. It’s likely the best performance of his career (better than his Oscar-nominated performance in last year’s Les Miserables), and if the Best Actor category wasn’t filled to the brim this year, he would likely be a serious contender for awards attention. Jake Gyllenhaal, who has built a solid resume doing this kind of ”second-lead” work, also gives a fine performance that doesn’t draw a lot of attention to itself, but is absolutely vital in the scheme of the film’s path to success.



Prisoners isn’t a perfect film. At nearly 150 minutes, the film is a bit long and drags in the middle as it overly ponders the moral quandary the two families face with Dover’s decision to take Alex prisoner. The final resolution of the plot is probably a tad messy as well and because of these small imperfections, it doesn’t quite reach the levels of the aforementioned Zodiac and Mystic River. However, particularly on its technical merits, Prisoners is an amazing, terse film. Easily topping the list of films I have seen in Toronto thus far and one of the standout movies of 2013 as well.

[jo]

This one, from THE WRAP, has a more sober impression of the movie --

www.thewrap.com/prisoners-review/

‘Prisoners’ Review: Smart Thriller Kidnapped by Red Herrings



Movies | By Todd Gilchrist on September 13, 2013 @ 6:41 am



Well-acted by Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman, but this conventional psychological thriller pretends it’s something more complex.

Not unlike Argo last year, “Prisoners” is a contemporary version of the kinds of movies made a few decades ago – this time serial-killer movies rather than political thrillers, and from the ‘90s rather than the ‘70s. Directed with sober, solemn earnestness by Denis Villeneuve (“Incendies”), it examines the emotional fallout of a child kidnapping on two families, even as it chronicles the psychological unraveling of the investigating detective.

Grim where its predecessors were spooky and barren where they were theatrical, “Prisoners” is a movie whose execution and performances are admirable, but its eventual concession to monologuing villains and life-or-death standoffs undermines the honest and substantive character work that precedes it.

Hugh Jackman plays Keller Dover, a God-fearing blue-collar contractor whose family dinner with neighbors Franklin (Terrence Howard) and Nancy Birch (Viola Davis) is interrupted when they discover that both of their youngest daughters have disappeared. Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) promptly apprehends Alex Jones (Paul Dano), the driver of a dingy camper that was spotted in the area, but he is forced to release the suspect when no evidence turns up.



Nevertheless determined that the young man has the children tied up somewhere, Dover kidnaps Jones and tries to torture him into confessing their whereabouts. But after Loki’s investigation turns up another suspect, Dover begins to question himself, trying to figure out not just if he went too far in the name of rescuing his daughter, but sealed her fate by pursuing the wrong man.


At two and a half hours, no moment is spared in Villeneuve’s chronicle of either the families’ pain or Loki’s painstaking efforts – and that’s mostly a good thing. Details about a dilapidated property Dover owns are revealed in naturalistic, memorable but unobtrusive bursts of dialogue, and the filmmaker never tips his hat too far when Loki notices clues that become relevant much, much later.

It’s in this subdued and realistic portrait of events that Villeneuve succeeds most consistently, because he gives us a sense not only of the chronology of events, but convincing feelings of culpability, hostility, fear, and resignation. Moreover, even when Dover decides to take the law into his own hands, there’s a genuine reluctance, an anguish that pervades even his cruelest explosions of violence.

At the same time, the film seems unable to reconcile its moral ambiguity and thoughtfulness with the rhythms of a more traditional cat-and-mouse thriller. Not that it’s possible any longer to create a truly evil kidnapper/killer/villain whose motives are equal to the mystery and sophistication of their crimes, but Villeneuve supplies the audience with whale-sized red herrings en route to his final revelations.

Although the film is smart enough to tie almost all of its suspects, digressions and distractions together by the end of the film, even cursory reflection upon what convergence of circumstances led to its conclusion becomes a dizzying array of singular character choices, working in concert with one another in only the most improbable ways.


Nevertheless two thirds of a remarkable portrait of causality – evaluating the choices we make, and how they affect the world around us – Prisoners is precisely the solid sort of adult fare that signals the arrival of awards season. Though it’s likely too grim to follow further in the footsteps of four-square a winner like Argo, the two share in common a sort of self-seriousness that tries to deceive the audience into believing it’s watching something deeply complex, when it’s really just well-acted and ultimately very conventional crowd-pleaser.

[birchie]

Sept 13, 2013 9:09:24 GMT -5 jo said:

This one, from THE WRAP, has a more sober impression of the movie --

www.thewrap.com/prisoners-review/

‘Prisoners’ Review: Smart Thriller Kidnapped by Red Herrings
<snip>
Nevertheless two thirds of a remarkable portrait of causality – evaluating the choices we make, and how they affect the world around us – Prisoners is precisely the solid sort of adult fare that signals the arrival of awards season. Though it’s likely too grim to follow further in the footsteps of four-square a winner like Argo, the two share in common a sort of self-seriousness that tries to deceive the audience into believing it’s watching something deeply complex, when it’s really just well-acted and ultimately very conventional crowd-pleaser.

Stupid article title & ridiculous to compare it to Argo. Nuff said! <rant> <boo>
Sue

[jo]

www.avclub.com/articles/toronto-2013-day-two-prisoners-provides-american-g,102580/

A "B+" rating -- same rating the reviewer assigned to 12 YEARS A SLAVE.

Toronto International Film Festival Toronto 2013, Day Two: Prisoners provides American genre thrills, while 12 Years A Slave gets the pundits bloviating


by A.A. Dowd and Ben Kenigsberg September 7, 2013


There’s no right or wrong way to attend a film festival, but it seems fair to assert that any American who comes to TIFF to watch nothing but high-profile American movies is—to put it kindly—not getting their money’s worth. Then again, sometimes a star-studded homegrown drama can be a nice festival palate cleanser, especially when the rest of your day is spent grappling with smaller, tougher, more esoteric fare. The English-language debut of Denis Villeneuve, who made the Oscar-nominated Incendies, Prisoners (Grade: B+) fits that bill nicely—though it’s not exactly a breezy genre distraction. Set in Pennsylvania, during the investigation of a child-kidnapping case, the film is conventional but almost nonstop gripping, even after its plotting takes a turn for the slightly ludicrous. A sense of impending doom seeps into the opening shot, in which an unsuspecting deer wanders into frame, the camera pulling back slowly to reveal the teenage hunter—father by his side—moving the animal into the crosshairs of his riffle.

As it turns out, these two aren’t the only ones on the prowl. Hours later, on the afternoon of a rainy Thanksgiving Day, two grade-school girls disappear. One of them is the daughter of the man from the first scene, a devout tough-love type played by Hugh Jackman, seething with intensity. Maybe too much intensity, actually: Burying all traces of his Wolverine-worthy charisma, the actor seems close to the edge from the start, which makes his eventual descent into blinding, bellowing rage less impactful. Better navigating a spectrum of emotions is Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays the investigating officer—a local hotshot detective who’s allegedly cracked every case he’s been assigned. Gyllenhaal lends this archetypal character an amusing irritability; his exasperation is basically the lone source of levity in what turns out to be a pretty relentlessly grim thriller.

Villeneuve crosscuts deftly between the efforts of his dueling protagonists, men united in their aims but divided by their methods. The police eventually nab a suspect, a mentally disabled man (Paul Dano) seen driving a suspicious van in the area, but they don’t have any evidence to keep him in custody. Consumed with paternal desperation, Jackman takes matters into his own hands; the subsequent scenes are disturbing not just for the brutality of their violence, but also for their allegorical power. (Jackman locks his silent captive in a cramped wooden box and slings a pillowcase over his head. Sound familiar?)

Prisoners is concerned with the relationship between ends and means, but not too deeply. It’s predominately a crackerjack mystery yarn, one that grows increasingly farfetched as it progresses but never quite loses its darkly magnetic pull. Working with the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, who lends this ugly material a seductive sheen, Villeneuve takes a heavy step into David Fincher territory: There are shades of Zodiac in the gorgeous nighttime photography and obsessive procedure and of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo in the implausible plotting. Prisoners also recalls the bleak crime dramas of Bong Jo-Hoon (Memories Of Murder, Mother), though it could have used a little more of those films’ ambiguity. In any case, the crowd I watched it with sat in awed, tense silence throughout—a mighty good sign that a thriller is doing its job. I might have to make room in my schedule for Enemy, another film directed by Villeneuve, starring Gyllenhaal, and showing at TIFF this year...

[jo]

From New York Magazine --

nymag.com/movies/reviews/prisoners-edelstein-2013-9/

Torturous

Hugh Jackman takes the law into his own hands (and then whacks Paul Dano with it) in Prisoners.

By David Edelstein
Published Sep 15, 2013


The killing of a child in ­Denis Villeneuve’s 2010 ­Incendies is so nightmarish that I hesitate to recommend the film, yet the act is true to a tribal culture perverted by what one character calls “the merciless logic of reprisals”—so true that I was sure the director wouldn’t exploit peril to small children for easy shocks in his kidnapping drama, Prisoners. But my faith has been shaken.

Prisoners, written by Aaron ­Guzikowski, doesn’t come on like another cheap kidnapping saga. It begins with the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and is studded with Catholic iconography and the promise of resurrection. It’s steeped in the higher gloom—the rain raineth every day—and the longing for a sign from above. Any sign. Christian hunter Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) discovers his 6-year-old daughter and her friend missing after Thanksgiving dinner. We don’t know who took them or if they’ve even been taken. But there was an RV parked on the block driven by one Alex Jones (Paul Dano), who has what’s described as a 10-year-old’s intellect. There’s no physical evidence—not enough for Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) to keep Alex locked up. But in a fracas following Alex’s release, he appears to whisper something to Dover that indicates he has seen the girls. So the hunter takes matters into his own ­righteous hands.

This is the meat of Prisoners—and I can’t predict how anyone else will react to the scenes in which Dover imprisons and tortures the mulishly withholding simpleton. But I found them shockingly undisturbing. It’s clear Alex knows more than he’s saying, and if it takes pounding his face in to find out what, so be it. Dover sits on the floor and moans at the violence he has been forced to inflict, while the father of the other girl (Terrence Howard) is stricken. Why? This is the old ticking-time-bomb scenario invoked by advocates of extreme interrogation—and if you succeed in selling that (usually bogus) scenario, there’s not much of a moral dilemma, at least in the context of a Hollywood thriller. Villeneuve is trying like hell to elevate what turns out to be a dumb genre picture.


Viola Davis has a crazily nuanced scene when she regards the imprisoned man for the first time, and that chameleon Melissa Leo provides a few frissons in creepy-neutral mode as Alex’s aunt. But Prisoners is a long sentence. The detective moves in slow motion, and you can’t tell if it’s because the pacing and structure are faulty or if it’s the filmmaker’s way of making you think, In the real world, there is no instant gratification. But in the real world there wouldn’t be a red herring as dumb as the one here. And it’s never clear what’s eating Gyllenhaal’s Loki, who’s God’s Loneliest Man—apart from Jackman’s Dover. Or me, sweating through Prisoners.

smiley-rolleyes010

[jo]

From The New Yorker --

www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2013/09/23/130923crci_cinema_denby

Prisoners” and “Salinger.”

by David Denby September 23, 2013
.

The images are gray, rain-streaked, and richly dank, and always in super-sharp focus. “Prisoners,” a sombrely impressive thriller in the style of “Mystic River” and “Zodiac,” was shot by the British cinematographer Roger Deakins, a master of bleakness (he also did “Fargo” and “No Country for Old Men”). Dreariness has its own kind of poetry—it certainly colors the mood of this harrowing tale, which is set in a Pennsylvania suburb. It’s a seemingly normal, quiet place, where fervid religion and rage against God exist side by side; it also has a history of missing children. Written by an American, Aaron Guzikowski, and directed by a Canadian, Denis Villeneuve, “Prisoners,” like “Mystic River” and “Zodiac,” is a thriller that digs into the dark cellars of American paranoia and aggression. Two couples, one African-American (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis) and one white (Hugh Jackman and Maria Bello), are celebrating Thanksgiving together when their two young daughters go outside to play, and immediately vanish. Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), the ace local police detective, arrests a feebleminded, apparently hapless young man (Paul Dano) as a suspect but releases him after a couple of days—he doesn’t have enough evidence to hold him. Loki is both systematic and highly intuitive, and Gyllenhaal, looking haggard and eaten up inside, projects decency and obsessiveness in equal measure—that’s why he keeps getting cast as a cop in movies. But one of the fathers, Keller Dover (Jackman), insists that Loki isn’t doing enough, and he rampages through town searching for the girls, part anguished parent, part vigilante, part morally blind avenger.

Most detective stories drive toward reassurance. In the beginning, someone is missing, or someone has been murdered; corruption festers under the prosperous surface of life; the time is out of joint. A detective uses his reason, his specialized knowledge of how criminals think, and gradually, after many mistakes, solves the crime, exposes the corruption, and pulls the pieces of our existence back into a satisfying whole. Life makes sense, after all. But “Prisoners,” like “Mystic River,” breaks the genre’s conventions. Villeneuve has what I keep looking for in directors: a charged sense of the way the world actually works. Dover, similar to the Sean Penn character in “Mystic River”—a man who loses his daughter and goes mad—falls into moral anarchy. His job in life, he keeps saying, is to protect his family. He’s morally right and also disastrously wrong. Jackman, with a black Vandyke beard, seems more backwoods than suburban here, and he’s frightening. For once, he has something genuine to sink his claws into—the narrow, ignorant righteousness of American macho at its most extreme. Dover’s intervention gums up Loki’s ordered way of doing things, and the movie turns into, among other things, a rivalry between method and impulse, with Loki, unable to solve the crime and taunted by Dover, falling into a deep rage of his own.

“Prisoners,” despite its gathering anxiety, has some of the pleasures of ordinary thrillers. But Villeneuve, who previously directed “Incendies,” does volatile scenes without exaggeration; parts of the movie are exceedingly violent, though the violence isn’t “fun”—it makes you wince. (Horror-film fans will not like this picture; some of it is actually horrifying.) Villeneuve throws us into a complicated skein of abductions going back years without losing the urgency of the present. “Prisoners” is a challenge: you have to decide who’s right and who’s wrong at every turn, and, when it’s over, ambiguity, rather than the satisfactions of harmony, reigns. Life stays out of joint. This movie suggests that it’s never really been any other way.

[jo]

2.5 out of 4, but classified as Rotten at RT --


www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/prisoners

Prisoners
By Ed Gonzalez ON September 15, 2013 Go to Comments (0)

2.5 out of 4 stars


Prisoners may be the year's most immaculate-looking drivel, a prismatically shot whodunit abundant in red herrings, but lacking in moral contemplation. Director Denis Villeneuve, similar to Roman Polanski, has an uncanny gift for composition, crafting his images from off-kilter angles that convey an unmistakable tension, so that an innocuous conversation between two men seethes with the same level of menace as the pounding of little hands against the walls of a mysterious recreational vehicle that may or may not be driven by the story's boogeyman. But unlike his magisterial Polytechnique, which blisteringly and unnervingly communicated a modern-mythic sense of man's almost existential alienation from women via a purposefully flamboyant aesthetic, the Quebecois filmmaker's first English-language production is no more, no less than a lavishly staged funeral procession, and its effect is borderline pornographic.

Villeneuve's heavy-handed, ultimately shallow symbology is felt in the very first scene, which depicts a suburban father, Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), and his teenage son, Ralph (Dylan Minnette), on a deer-hunting trip. It's a rainy (of course) Thanksgiving afternoon, and after the dishes are cleaned, Keller and his wife, Grace (Maria Bello), and their children visit the home of their neighbors, Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis). Bliss quickly turns to agony when the families realize their youngest daughters, Anna (Erin Gerasimovich) and Joy (Kyla Drew Simmons), have gone missing. A maddening search for the girls and the RV their children earlier encountered down the road leads nowhere, but later that night, the local police, spearheaded by the solemnly eager Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), discover the vehicle and its driver, Alex Jones (Paul Dano), who's ultimately released from custody for lack of evidence.

The title of the film is practically neon-lit with capital-M meaning, and it shines blindingly on everyone. Evoking Sean Penn's grieving father from Mystic River, but with a little Wolverine coursing through his veins, Keller kidnaps and brutally imprisons Alex, and the stage appears set for an inquiry into the nature of a man's impulsively histrionic thirst for vigilante justice. But the filmmakers are uninterested in exploring the feelings of guilt and redemption that weigh on their characters' hearts and minds. Not that they need to in Keller's case, as the blue-collar dad is so convinced of Alex's wrongdoing that he feels no remorse. Less defensible is how the film fails to get to roots of the man's violent rage, even shortchanging the sense of wrongdoing Franklin and Nancy feel as they're swept up in Keller's plan, though to Howard and Davis's credit, their heroically performed flood of tears and snot in two notable scenes has a way of picking up screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski's slack.

Prisoners is mostly content to lead audiences down an unnerving narrative labyrinth that's so heavily breadcrumbed with MacGuffins that there comes a point where the story's trite attempts at characterization (such as Loki's incessant, uncommented-upon blinking, possibly a sign of OCD and, perhaps, a reason why he's never failed to solve a crime) come to feel like diversions. Because of its exquisite visual textures and brisk pacing, especially during a series of home invasions so chillingly staged that cinema's future masters of horrors should take note, it's easy enough to ignore the story's unimaginative formula. But while it's beyond clear at this point that Denis Villeneuve and the great Roger Deakins can convincingly repurpose IKEA particle-board furniture and make it seem as if it belongs in a Restoration Hardware catalogue, wrestle with it long enough and it'll still inevitably falls apart.

[jo]

Rated A minus --

thefilmstage.com/reviews/tiff-review-prisoners/

Prisoners

TIFF 2013 Review

[Warner Bros.; 2013]

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Runtime: 153 minutes

Written by Christopher Schobert, September 16, 2013 at 2:15 pm


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Prisoners might be the most shockingly dark studio release since Fight Club, a grim, unsettling, occasionally convoluted, but undeniably gripping thriller. The nightmare America of Denis Villeneuve’s film is sadly believable, and it results in a truly moving experience — one that audiences might not see coming. On paper, after all, this Hugh Jackman-Jake Gyllenhaal-starrer looked like just another procedural, a (possible) turkey jammed full of movie-of-the-week stuffing. The trailers were not particularly memorable, the likable Jackman and Gyllenhaal do not always choose their roles wisely, screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski’s only previously filmed screenplay was for Contraband, and even though Villeneuve directed the Oscar-nominated Incendies, he is still a relatively unproven commodity.

From its 153-minute running time to its plot, Prisoners is a film that audiences might be afraid of, particularly after hearing just how dark this story is. But if one gives it a chance, they’ll be rewarded with one of 2013’s most powerful and gut-wrenching surprises. Villeneuve opens things, appropriately, with a father and son hunting trip, and from scene one, it is clear that Hugh Jackman’s Keller Dover is an intense individual. A carpenter, he lives a modest life with his wife (Maria Bello), teenage son, and young daughter. Shortly before heading to spend Thanksgiving with their neighbors — a father and mother played by always solid Terrence Howard and Viola Davis, and their daughters — a beat-up camper rumbles down the street, croaking to a stop. When the two family’s young daughters do not return after a trip back to the Dover household, this camper takes on great significance.



The girls, it seems, have disappeared, and a perennially exhausted (at least, he appears this way) Detective Loki, played by a focused Gyllenhaal, is assigned to the case. The camper is quickly found, and with it a suspect — a strange, child-like figure named Alex Jones (a whimpering Paul Dano). Alex lives with his no-nonsense aunt (Melissa Leo), and seems drift in a world all his own. Keller quickly concludes that Jones is the kidnapper, and when he is released, he devises a plan to find the girls. Meanwhile, Loki continues his frustrating search, both families become increasingly despondent, and secrets from the past are slowly unearthed.

If, at this point, Prisoners sounds like many other films in the kidnapped kid genre, rest assured, it is not. This experience is much more grim, much more disturbingly violent, and much more morally and thematically complex, than any recent “thriller.” Part of this is thanks to Guzikowski’s twist-y script, but there is also the work of its leads. Jackman is coming off a wildly successful few months that saw a Best Actor nomination for his Jean Valjean in Les Misérables as well as robust returns for The Wolverine. But in Prisoners, he is shockingly unhinged, giving what is clearly his finest performance as a man who will do anything — anything — to save his daughter. He is matched by Gyllenhaal, whose performance is much more subtle, and no less effective. Loki is the heart of Prisoners, and in many ways Gyllenhaal has the more difficult part.



Villeneuve — who brought another well-received collaboration with Gyllenhaal, Enemy, to TIFF — oversees the sprawling story with commendable restraint…mostly. There are moments when the film loses its balance, and I’m not sure the story holds up to close scrutiny; the plot becomes increasingly convoluted, the villainy a bit over-the-top. But what never flags is the level of emotion, or its visual elegance. The unsung hero of Prisoners is surely its incomparable cinematographer, Roger Deakins. In his hands, simple, ho-hum suburban sights appear positively evil. The film is a visual catalog of deep, dark places — a priest’s hidden basement, grungy campers, tightly shuttered houses in suburbia.

It is also a catalog of fears: dark basements, snakes, hidden doors, bloody clothing, snakes, quasi-torture chambers, snakes. It all comes together to create an emotionally memorable experience. One thing is certain: When Prisoners is finished, expect every parent in the audience to race home and check on their kids. It might seem easy to pull off such a feat — TIFF 2013 certainly had its share of effective children-in-peril movies — but doing so in a way that does not feel manipulative is quite a feat. As difficult to watch as it may be, Prisoners is one of this year’s essential dramas.

Prisoners premiered at TIFF and will hit theaters on Friday, September 20th. One can see our complete coverage by clicking below.


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