Review: Prisoners

The camera pans into a dusty stairwell leading down from the trapdoor into the dark basement. A musty smell pushes him back momentarily, like a palm thrust against his face. The scene cuts to change the shot, now focusing at him from the bottom of the stairwell, as if something is watching him from down below. He chooses his steps carefully down the flight of stairs, cutting the darkness with the sharp beam of his flashlight. Camera angle changes once again, now over his shoulder staring into the darkness below ahead of him. You see a callused hand placing itself on his shoulder. That’s your cue to shriek, squirm, an opportunity to grab your boyfriend’s biceps perhaps. A familiar setting for a thriller/slasher flick? Maybe. But then again, not quite if the flick in question is Prisoners.

Folks who have seen Zodiac may get a sense of déjà vu with its intricate storyline and cerebral treatment. Same is the case here right down to the obsessive detective with his funny eccentricities, but more on that later. The flick opens with the brusque and brooding lead, Keller Dover – played by Hugh Jackman – uttering a prayer as his son shoots a deer in the woods; a symbol for the deep religious theme that underscores the movie. You see this surface throughout the movie – snakes which evoke the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the inner turmoil of a father driven to brutality in a desperate bid to locate his daughter. It reminds you of Se7en with a deep sense of melancholy pervading the length of the film. Unlike the former which skirts the thin line between mind numbing boredom and psychosis, this takes you back to the days of the frontiersmen when the American wild was yet to be won and men like Jackman’s character survived under the shadow of their hunting rifle.

The narrative is very verry deliberate but that’s what it takes to plumb the depths of the characters. And that’s also what it takes to convey the despair of two sets of parents dealing with the disappearance of their daughters. This is very much a good vs evil story and the descent of god-fearing men into violence and bloodshed. The movie’s greatest success is to depict that struggle; the scene where Jackman is barely able to restrain himself from rearranging the suspected abductor’s jaws with a hammer and brings it down crashing into a sink instead is stirring. This isn’t one for the faint hearted; you can’t help but cringe as you watch Paul Dano’s – playing the main suspect – character being pummeled into a bloody pulp by Jackman who brooks no resistance in tracking his daughter down. You hold your breath as you follow an intruder into the Birch – the family of the other missing child – home, clueless about the motive but with a clear sense of foreboding. You can’t bear to watch as you expect the worst and yet the scene culminates in a way which leaves you heaving a sigh like never before. Whether it’s one of relief you gotta watch the movie to find out!

The flick is nothing if not for its powerhouse performances. Jake Gyllenhaal playing Detective Loki is almost talismanic in his presence. His chronic blinking injects an almost farcical element in the otherwise grim proceedings. The portrayal of at times kooky and always obsessed cop is pitted against the other titan in the movie, the often maniacal portrayal of a possessed father by Hugh Jackman. Best known for his superhuman feats in X-Men, this dapper auteur turns in a delicious performance which surely must also go down as a lesson on Machismo 101. Styling himself on the intrepid patriarch from back in the bad old days when you stood guard with a gun as your family slept, the viewer can almost see a sleeping giant being roused by the sequence of events. He is taciturn but spits out words like gunshots, is moved to tears with grief but willing to scald and maim in an effort to locate his daughter. Wannabe tough guys, this is one playbook from which you could fish out a leaf or two. The supporting cast does their job well which is to reach deep into their souls to make sense of the sudden and inexplicable loss. Themes of alienation and isolation in small town America come to the fore. Things always aren’t what they seem and that’s what keeps the narrative chugging along, even if the plot unravels too early in my opinion for a classic whodunit.

This is a must watch if you are hooked to David Fincher movies although this one is by Denis Villeneuve. Don’t expect for all the pieces of the jigsaw to fall into place however, that would do disservice to such a nuanced film