Wolverine blows rape whistle, fanboys weep

Rating: Null/10 (13 January 2014)

"Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Amen." - Reinhold Niebuhr
Dennis Villeneuve directs "Prisoners". The film opens on Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), a tough survivalist who recounts the Lord's prayer whilst hunting for deer. "Your kingdom come, your will be done," he murmurs, before watching as a bullet kills his prey.
Villeneuve quickly sketches Dover as a conservative Christian, survivalist, carpenter and master of his own fate. Dover hates relinquishing control, hates waiting and, more importantly, likes to take matters into his own hands. Villeneuve then clashes Dover's obstinacy with the song "Man from Galilee", a Christian hymn about a man with "sightless eyes" who doesn't "trust in God", who refuses to wait for God's "will to be done", and who refuses to "cry for help". Dover's first name, Keller, itself recalls Helen Keller, famously deaf and blind. Dover will eventually be revealed to be similarly deaf and blind.
Early in "Prisoners", Dover's daughter Anna is abducted. Joy, his neighbour's daughter, is similarly missing. Both are the victims of Holly (Melissa Leo), a serial killers who has abducted over sixteen kids. Why? After the death of her son, Holly came to blame Christ for ruining her life. Wishing to spread misery, she thus kidnaps, drugs and kills the kids of devout believers. She aims to instigate existential crises and a total disbelief in God.
Dover, of course, believes in God wholeheartedly, but doesn't ACT as though he does. Developing this theme is a subplot in which Jake Gyllenhaal plays Loki, the detective tasked with finding the two missing girls. Trusting his own private hands and his own narrow perspective, Dover refuses to have faith in Loki. Significantly, Loki is named after the Norse God of mischief and chaos, and has crucifixes tattooed to his knuckles. He's perhaps emblematic of a "higher", "mysterious" order, and perhaps also a natural "disorder", which the blustery, knuckle-headed Dover refuses to rely or call upon.
"Prisoners" ends with several revelations. A man found dead under the basement of a priest is revealed to be Holly's husband, a pair of young suspects (Bob Taylor and Alex Jones) are revealed to be victims of Holly, and references to mazes prove to be allusions to methods used by Holly to psychologically torture her victims. More importantly, it is revealed that had Loki or Dover done absolutely nothing throughout the film, Joy would have escaped and revealed the identity of her kidnappers anyway. Whether this is "God's plan" or "sheer coincidence" is left up to the viewer, though the film does suggest that it views Dover's neighbours, the Birches (steadfast like hardwood birch?), as "true Christians". Joy escapes, in a sense, because her parents are unwavering in their faith. Alternatively, Joy's escape represents a sense of randomness or sheer capriciousness which the militant Dover refuses to acknowledge.
Regardless, Villeneuve packs his film with odd bits of symbolism. Loki's constant blinking, for example, echoes the blinking flashlight which illuminates a priest's cellar and also Dover's sputtering flashlight, which reveals both a "cellar" and the "rape whistle" he once gave daughter Anna. Elsewhere both Holly's husband (also a serial killer) and Dover find themselves trapped underground and judged for their sins, but only Dover repents and escapes; he symbolically blows an emergency whistle, crying for help and so finally relinquishing control to a higher authority.
"Prisoners" is handsomely directed by Dennis Villeneuve. The film is immaculately lit, beautifully framed, engrossing, but also unintentionally silly in places (Why would Holly let two of her victims roam free?). The film's middle act contains an extended sequence in which Dover captures and tortures a young man whom he believes to be his daughter's kidnapper, a subplot about belief which is too quickly dropped and which never convincingly seeps into or impacts the rest of the film's drama.
Interestingly, without this subplot, the film's philosophical point would have been exposed as a sham: Dover is absolutely right to do anything he can to find Anna, we only chastise him because he descends into criminality. In most situations, it is silly to bow in the face of a supposed "higher power", be it God or indeterminism. The film preaches passivity, inaction and faith (in God or destiny), a stance which relies upon a very specific straw-man: the belief that the opposite is irrational, dangerous or immoral.
Beyond this, the film's aesthetic recalls "Seven" and Joon-ho Bong's "Memories of Murder". It's themes recall "The Pledge", Dumont's "Humanite" and "X-Files: I Want To Believe", all more substantial crime films which touch upon similar themes. It's climax resembles "Spoorloos", also with burials and daughters kidnapped. As comparison, see "The Next Three Days" and "The Limits of Controll", the former about a man who successfully wrestles control away from "God".
7.5/10 – Worth one viewing.