Sombre and eerie masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (7 August 2015)

A very sombre and eerie story, the music, dark locations, run-down houses and wounded characters left me with a feeling of foreboding. The apparent kidnapping of two children immediately thrusts two families into a crisis in the middle of their Thanksgiving get-together. The rest of the movie deals with the fallout for families, police, neighbours, suspects, etc. and the suspense is tight enough to grip the audience until the end. The leading characters are played by Hugh Jackman, as Keller Dover, the father of one of the children, and Jake Gyllenhall, as Detective Logi, the man assigned to the case. Dover is a man of strength and ferocity who sees his purpose in life to defend and protect his wife and family from harm. When this particular crisis hits, his one objective is to rescue his daughter unharmed and nothing will stop him, even taking the law into his own hands. This leads to a some horrific scenes with the immediate suspect, a young man with a limited intelligence played by Paul Dano and his mother played by Melissa Leo. Maria Bello plays Dover's wife with Terrence Howard and Viola Davis as the parents of the second child. The detective uses every resource available to try to locate the children. Detective Loki is a low-key but determined police officer who cannot keep Keller Dover from flying into a continuous rage over the time it takes to find the kidnap victims. The final scene and ambiguous ending left a bit of a question mark. The strange sequence of events is a dark look at how people react to one horrific event but it contains elements of heroism. Denis Villeneuve has directed what I consider a brilliant movie.