The 7 Deadly Sins of PRISONERS

Rating: 3/10 (17 December 2013)

7. Rain. Constant rain and snow. The story is gloomy, I get it. Does it also have to be relentlessly dark and poorly lit?
6. When was the last time you watched any decent film, or TV show for that matter, where a sensational headline-grabbing crime against children is investigated by one-- count him, one-- detective. This small town may have limited resources, but when two young girls go missing, even a two-man department puts both men on it. When Jackman blames Gyllenhaal personally for not finding the girls quickly, it took a few seconds for my eyes to roll back into place.
5. Nobody locks their doors. Even AFTER the girls go missing, one of the possible bad guys walks into both of their houses, while people are at home, and steals items. Easy peasy.
4. The Paul Dano character endures 10 hours of interrogation by Gyllenhaal, then when he is released, suddenly whispers a clue to one of the fathers (Hugh Jackman), which no one else can hear, and therefore no one believes. The result is Jackman capturing and torturing Dano for a week-- and he still won't talk. Why not? So the filmmakers can have him tortured twice.
3. The other suspect (David Dastmalchian), another man who was once kidnapped and abused, keeps trunks full of snakes in his house. Evidently, this is just to scare the police, and the audience, but it only confuses things.
2. Okay, I know this will be about as popular as saying that Ryan Gosling actually looks like a gosling (which he does), but here goes: Jake Gyllenhaal has one expression: doleful. Given how dumb his character is, that almost works. Still, you'd think that an animal expression would cross his countenance occasionally.
1. Motivation. While we drown in motivation for Jackman's vigilantism, little motivation is provided for the crime(s). We're told the kidnappings are the perpetrators' way of "getting back at God" because their son died. It's a lazy, trumped-up reason for a thriller. And the balance is way off. The filmmakers wallow in the torture of innocent suspects, motivated by "good" characters (Jackman, Howard, Davis), while the real villain is hardly seen until the end, and the motive for having tortured children is only mentioned in passing. It's amoral film-making. By the time the movie is over, my relief and apathy were so great that all I wanted was escape. If I'd had a toy whistle, I'd have been just like Hugh Jackman at that point.