Crime Story For Adults.

Rating: 7/10 (15 May 2014)

There is a scene in "On Dangerous Ground" (1951) in which half-crazy detective Robert Ryan is about to beat the living crap out of a suspect to gain information. Ryan's features twist into a pustule of hate, hardly human. "Why do you DO it? Why do you punks make me DO it?" And then he goes frantically to work.
This is a a more complex story of the kidnapping of two little girls and the lengths to which the parents and police are willing to go to either retrieve the victims or find the bodies. But the most complicated character, the father who engages our interest because he instrumentalizes his grief and anger (Jackman), does more or less what Ryan does in the earlier film. He goes berserk, tramples on the law, and reduces a half-wit that he suspects to a bloody pulp.
There are harmonies in the sometimes torpid story that I didn't quite get or wasn't sure of. There are ominous organ chords, a drunken priest who is a red herring, and references to penance. There's a candle light vigil for the girls. It's deep enough, even without any spiritual content. After all, when you get right down to it, the question raised by Jackman's tactics is: "How far is it ethical to go in torturing a prisoner, even in a good cause?" It's a medieval issue but recently a more contemporary one.
It's a long movie -- too long, really -- and it could have benefited from more ruthless cutting, yet it all adds up. The director, Villeneuve, effectively captures the drab aspects of working-class life in one of those flat, brick, ranch-type residential neighborhoods on the outskirts of a small town in Pennsylvania, actually shot in Georgia.
The acting is, well, hard to describe in a word but maybe "naturalistic" will do. It's something like "All The President's Men" in that respect. The kidding around and the hesitations and interruptions don't sound as if they were being read from cue cards.
Jackman is fine as the enraged father who is determined to beat a confession out of his retarded prisoner, but he's not a sadist. He doesn't ENJOY doing it. And the scenes are truncated, avoiding the nasty current affection for torture porn that has infected movies like "Unthinkable" or the unbearable "The Killing Gene." The viewer is likely to be "for" or "against" the other characters but Jackman's is problematic. He's not just rude or irrational. He's brutal. It's what makes it the most interesting role.
In fact, everyone pulls his or her weight, but Maria Bello is truly impressive, though she doesn't have that much screen time. And Mellisa Leo as the mother of the chief suspect is outstanding. One of those distant, suspicious, kindly authoritative, slightly sour Midwesterners, though she's from New York.
The ending collapses in upon itself. People do idiotic things like search dangerous places without calling for back up. Without warning, a familiar character splits open and reveals the demon within. Cliché follows cliché. I still don't exactly understand it. The rest is tense, involving, quite well done.