Winner: Worst Police Work on Film

Rating: 2/10 (23 January 2014)

Spoilers ahead. Not that it matters.
Oh my, what a waste of top talent and resources. This could have been a taut, effective, thoughtful little thriller, but the ridiculous plot holes and logical inconsistencies doom it (along with its unnecessary length). The Hugh Jackman character is such a glaring box-checking conceit that it diminishes any complexity I'm pretty sure we're MEANT to appreciate about him. Religious? Check. Hard-working common man? Check. Struggling in these dire economic times? Check. Adorable, loving family? Check. Tragic family event in past that molded his character? Check. Ironic plot development? Check. (The doomsday prepper gets burned; but wait, that whistle did come in handy, as we knew it would.) OK, let's stop there. I'm not saying the plight of the parents was not moving. Who is not moved by children in jeopardy, parents in misery? It's difficult to not see plots like this in terms of the basest exploitation. But it takes a sure and subtle hand to make it work, and that was obviously missing here. Many have compared it to Mystic River, which is apt, though that was a far finer film, and more believable as a police procedural. I imagine the screenwriter and director wanted us to take a hard look at what might happen when a good man goes bad for all the right reasons, but the lengths he goes to in torturing the Paul Dano character just don't make sense. Yes, maybe that's the point: Keller is beyond "sense." OK, but when the two other parents acquiesce to the torture (albeit somewhat reluctantly, but still), I wanted to throw something at the screen.
While I'm still on "character," Jake Gyllenhaal's detective is an absolute cipher. Maybe this was a decision NOT to give him a backstory of any kind because that would be lame. Fine. But in place of that we get a bad haircut, shirt-buttoned-all-the-way-but-no-tie look, some twitchy blinking, and not much else. I was rooting for him mostly because he wasn't actively torturing anyone.
Other complaints:
*One detective seems to be assigned to this very explosive case. Other than combing the fields for bodies, no one else seems involved in the "investigation." OK, this was probably a decision so the focus would be on Loki (his name,really?) and not on some partner chitchat, and at a 2 hr., 33 min. runtime, I should shut up about it, but it so goes against any police reality, that I couldn't forgive it.
*Gyllenhaal makes a decision pretty early that the Paul Dano character is innocent, and so he is released - without surveillance and without police protection, even though Jackman's character has already attacked him. Yes, I know, some perfunctory BS scene with Gyllenhaal's superior was included to explain why there was no surveillance, but that also was stupid. He was their only real suspect. And a search of his aunt's property didn't reveal . . . drugs, syringes, handguns, sedated girls? Nobody looked into the history of this little "farmily"? The aunt is taken at her word about everything. Oh wait . . . she had to be, or Hugh Jackman could not have kidnapped Paul Dano and we wouldn't have a movie.
*The priest has a dead body in the basement. Obviously, he takes his vow about confessions more seriously than the commandment about murder. Oh, and that dead body turns out to be . . . Well, you know if you saw it.
*The abandoned apartment where Dano is held is never searched (convenient new suspect emerges at critical juncture, too busy to send someone else over there to do a thorough search).
*Red herring to end all red herrings: deranged young man with mazes, snakes, pig blood, buried mannequins, stolen children's clothing.
*Just in general: too much crazy in too limited a geographical space (see Priest, Snake Boy, Crazy Aunt).
*One child escapes . . . while heavily sedated? Crazy aunt nonetheless stays put, does not kill remaining child immediately. Why she was keeping them alive in the first place is not convincingly explained.
*ONE person deciding that a dead child means warring with God and creating "demons" by abducting and killing other people's children is a just response to personal tragedy is far-fetched (not impossible, certainly), but TWO! Good times. Of course, the Man suffers a crisis of conscience apparently and confesses to the wrong priest. The Woman (female of the species and all that) has to keep muddling along, killing when she gets a chance. Times are tough (the recession applies to child abduction too).
*The maze symbol is both too obvious (morally) and too opaque. Dead guy in basement wearing one, crazy crime re-enactor draws them, imprisoned Dano whispers it? Connection unclear.
I wish I had that whistle at the end, so someone would have come and saved me from this movie.