Prisoners

Synopsis: It’s Thanksgiving and two neighbouring Pennsylvania families, The Dovers, Keller (Hugh Jackman), and Grace (Maria Bello) and their teenage son and daughter celebrate the occasion with the Birches (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis) and their similarly-aged daughters. Meal over, the young girls go to play but after a while the parents realize that they are nowhere to be found.  Following a fruitless search they call the police. Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) is assigned to the case and quickly a young man in a camper man, Alex Jones (Paul Dano), is suspected.  When it turns out that he is mentally incapable, Loki starts to look elsewhere but the grief-stricken Keller can’t let go of his belief that Jones was involved.

On every level Prisoners is a superior thriller. Most thrillers unfold in some extraordinary set of circumstance and even the best tend to bend the laws of probability out of shape in order to realize the requirements of their tension-escalating plot. The beauty of Denis Villeneuve’s film is that whilst it has as many twists and turns as any screenwriter’s flight of fancy, bar the occasional quibble, it is firmly grounded in the everyday.  This is, however, only the beginning.  Aaron Gruzikowski’s script isn’t just a whodunit. It also explores the shattering consequences that such an event can have on all involved.  Films of any kind rarely have this degree of psychological profiling, let alone thrillers.  And yet what really makes the film so gripping is its intensity and here everything from Rogers Deakins’ chilly cinematography of the wintry suburban landscape to Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal’s tightly-wound performances work to draw us into the drama.

Villeneuve, who was responsible for the powerful Incendies in 2010 is clearly a director with an interest in the dark side of humanity, one which we know from the relatively recent revelations of the Ariel Castro abduction and imprisonment of three young women in Cleveland, Ohio, can live on any suburban street.  This apparent disjunction is the fulcrum about which the narrative uncomfortably turns and turns. Appearances dissolve to reveal something quite different and good intentions reap bad consequences as it becomes increasingly difficult to say what is fact and what is the fevered imagination of the anguished Keller.  That all this is achieved without ever sacrificing the mundanity of the world in which the events take place is a remarkable achievement.

As the desperate father, Jackman establishes himself as a serious dramatic actor rather than simply a stud-muffin stage performer while Jake Gyllenhaal shows an impressive maturity in what is a classic committed cop role. Viola Davis and Mario Bello are both convincing as the grieving mothers and Paul Dano once again takes on an eccentric character to good effect. The only reservations one might have is in the casting. For whatever reason Terrence Howard contributes little whilst Melissa Leo as Alex’s elderly aunt seems an unnecessarily perverse choice when so many genuinely older actresses could have done the role without looking like Norman Bates’ mother.

Notwithstanding, Prisoners is an exceptional film, dark and disturbing but not to be missed.

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