Prisoners (2013) Movie Review
The Dover’s, Keller, Ralph, Grace (Maria Bello) and Anna
(Erin Gerasimovich) are celebrating Thanks Giving around their neighbour’s
house, the Birch’s, in their quite Pennsylvania town. After the two young girls
from either family, Anna Dover and Joy Birch (Kyla Drew Simmons), go looking
for a red whistle that Keller had lost some time back, they both go missing and
the finger is then pointed at Alex Jones, whose RV was where the girls where
playing near earlier on in the film.
The Birch family, Franklin (Terrence Howard), Nancy (Viola
Davis) ,Eliza (Zoe) and the Dover’s Thanks Giving is thrown into turmoil and
they then take matters into their own hands when they feel that the cop assigned
to their case, Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), isn’t doing enough to find
their daughters.
‘Prisoners’ is a very chilling film, using suspense to its
advantage without spoiling it with a cheap jump scare. This is a very realistic
take on a kidnapping; you have both ends of the work going into finding these
girls. Detective Loki, has solved every case he has been assigned to and you
can understand why with the sheer work he is putting it to find these girls. At
the other end of the spectrum you get the vast range of emotions flowing
through the families that is explored well. You get the devastation from Grace,
the anger from Keller and both are explored greatly whilst balancing this fear
that they may not find their daughter.
The cast is one of the best assembled in 2013 so far and
they all give very strong performances. Hugh Jackman is the stand out and since
being apart of the Oscar Winner ‘Les Miserables’ he is giving it all to every
part he is playing. Jake Gyllenhall, Melissa Leo and Paul Dano are equally
superb; nothing about their performance could be faulted. Everything these
characters are doing is in aid to find their daughters, nothing feels
unnecessary and everything has its place to add to the emotions these
characters should be feeling. The one
weak point is Kyla Drew Simmons character, as you rarely get to see her
emotions after this devastation, but I do feel this is largely down to the
short screen time she had compared to the rest of the cast and wasn’t anything
to do with her acting capabilities.
‘Prisoners’ does get going fairly quickly, but is extremely
long (at 153 minutes) and you do feel that perhaps a few of the repetitive
scenes could possibly have been axed from the final cut to shorten the movie.
But saying that the movie never drags, and director Denis Villeneuve has done a
great job to constantly lead the audience up these different paths, leaving you
constantly guessing who has taken their daughters.
Another aspect of the realism is that the police are literally
starting with only the bare minimal information that the Dovers and Birch’s have
provided, Loki has to explore leads that lead to dead ends as they would in
real life, whereas in other movies that use a kidnapping, (using Taken 2 again
as an example) they tend to find a vital piece of evidence or a clue at he
scene to where the missing person is and they are immediately on the right
path. With ‘Prisoners’ you get this layer of realism that overall makes this
film more enjoyable than the majority of films in this topic.
Chilling and suspenseful, ‘Prisoners’ is well crafted from
start to finish. Not only is it well acted but the sheer emotion pouring out of
these characters makes you really feel you are apart of that family and hope
they are able to find their daughters. ‘Prisoners’ is engaging from start to
finish in the way that you are constantly making up predictions in your head to
who the kidnapper is and this makes the two and a half hours easily manageable.
Prisoners is undoubtedly a must see and is one of the best films released this
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