If you're a parent, child abduction is an uncomfortable
subject to be presented with in almost any medium; it's certainly something I
wouldn't wish upon anyone. Having said
that, I do believe that there is room for a serious film to use this as a
subject by which to ask deep questions about human nature, and to examine how
individuals react under extreme circumstances such as this.
'Prisoners' casts Hugh Jackman, Maria Bello, Terence
Howard and Viola Davis as the parents of two girls who are abducted, at the
suspected hands of Paul Dano; Jake Gyllenhaal plays the Detective investigating
the case. If you've seen the trailer,
you'll be familiar with the set up, and it seems as though the intention of
this film - which has Jackman's character kidnap, imprison and torture Dano's
suspect character under the belief he knows where the girls are - is to carry
out the sort of exploration of human behaviour I describe above.
Sadly, if 'Prisoners' was trying to do this, it fails by
falling in to being a pretty standard procedural/mystery thriller. By the time it reaches its conclusion you
can't help but feel that if the makers had concentrated on being one or the
other, and hadn't pulled their punches at a couple of points, this could have
been more successful either as a thriller OR as a character-driven drama.
It's not for the want of trying - the performances are on
the whole solid, with Jackman providing the drive and intensity you'd expect
from the man who will always be identified with Wolverine; Dano, often cast as
a bit of a weirdo, manages to elicit no small amount of sympathy for his
portrayal of a damaged young man with a child's IQ. Other than that, the rest of the cast feels a
little under used. There is one major
stand-out however - Jake Gyllenhaal's superb performance as Detective Loki, a
twitchy, haunted man - haunted by what is never made clear, as his back-story
is never really expanded. But
Gyllenhaal's acting performance elevates what might have been a clichéd
character in to the film's strongest asset.
Don't be surprised to see his name at awards nominations in the coming
months.
I had anticipated that this film would either leave me
feeling frustrated or underwhelmed - as the story ploughs in to typical
mystery/thriller territory, I had a feeling that it would not deliver something
as dark and thought-provoking as the trailer suggested. The cinematography helps to maintain a
suitably gloomy tone, and there are some attempts at establishing some iconography
and imagery to build on the mystery - however this simply helps to pull things
away from drama in to straightforward thriller territory. There's also some pretty tactless stabs at
some sort of commentary on post-War on Terror America - these don't have the
impact you'd expect simply because they're not exactly subtle, and they're also
over-shadowed by the film's plot. It's
clear that the intention of the writers, and of director Denis Villeneuve, was
to make a very serious drama - sadly it seems to pull away from them in a
direction they possibly weren't quite aiming for.
For those reasons I would say that this film is
ultimately a bit of a missed opportunity - if you're in the mood for a twisty
thriller, then this will most likely be a compelling distraction for the 2 1/2
hour run time; but in terms of a more serious drama, this isn't your best bet
so far this year.
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