Film review: Prisoners

I went into this film expecting some kind of ‘Taken’ format, the preview showed what looked like a very angry Hugh Jackman barking authority and on a mission. In the film, two families find that there youngest daughters have gone missing during thanksgiving, prompting a lookout, and then a hunt. After viewing, I would liken this in some ways to ‘Law-Abiding Citizen’, once again we have a dynamic where we are built up to root for a clear protagonist, and then watch as we start to see them do things we’re unsure about. At some point in this film you really zoom out and realise how taking action during spells of anger can really just feed momentum to an already bad situation.

As always, I have to be a fan of the approach they chose, again including a character with a somewhat more traditional moral compass in the form of a Police Officer played by Jake Gyllenhaal. The dynamic between the two main characters and the way you kept flipping between who you rooted for and which was the lesser of two evils was very much a compelling watch. Outside of that I can’t say I saw a lot of depth in the main problem or plot, some of the premise was a bit old fashioned or at least not unique. However, things like that are the criteria for a really great film, and perhaps shouldn’t be expected.

Among some of the quality stuff I’ve seen of late, Prisoners would fall into the slightly more forgettable category, had it not been for Hugh Jackman. There are few more energetic and committed actors alive than this guy, and certain scenes took me aback when you saw beyond the veil of a classic revenge character template, and that is what I’ll take away from this film.

Rating: 7.5/10