A very good first half before the film sadly degenerates into a messy and over-complicated, convoluted second half

Rating: 5/10 (3 December 2013)

Prisoners is the latest in a long line of critically revered movies- the type of film that gets revered to death by critics and makes it into a number of "best of the year" lists that has me wondering if I somehow got conned into seeing a fraudulent copy of the movie, or if the critics have either temporarily or permanently lost their minds. No doubt a lot of films have left me with that feeling this year (Gravity being another example), but Prisoners may be the worst example. And there's also no doubt in my mind that this film is widely loved by those film school students who only seem to love "film" and not mainstream movies, probably out of sheer fear that they'll probably enjoy one. And what makes it so bizarre that I'm saying this is that Prisoners isn't a bad movie at all. Sure, bizarre, pretentious and way in over its head at times? Maybe. But for the first half at least, the audience can assure themselves that they're about to watch a quality suspense-drama about what a parent does when their kid inexplicably goes missing.
No doubt, the first half of this film is incredibly solid and for a while, I was positive that I was wrong about any misgivings I had. It's well filmed, even. Then again, anything shot by Roger Deakins will look really pretty. The film's slow and meditative pace was also a big factor in keeping the film grounded, because it almost made it feel as if everything was happening in real time. When the parents find out their kids have gone missing, their desperation feels incredibly real. Hell, I didn't mind when they brought in Paul Dano in as a suspect as soon as they did, because it did make for some interesting brain work. In particular, the scene where Hugh Jackman encounters him in the parking lot and Dano distinctly whispers, "They only cried when I left them..." was brilliantly executed.
However, it's when a second suspect named Bob (yeah, it's not like I haven't seen films about kids gone missing where the kidnapper/pedophile is named Bob... get real) is brought in, where the film takes a turn for the worst. This is where the film degenerates into a mess of subplots that go nowhere, over-wrought symbolism and a conclusion that is utterly ridiculous and insulting. There are some problems early on in the film and moments where the film comes off as weak, but at least it has the performances and cinematography to fall back on. But it's here where the problems become obvious.
Alright, let's ignore all the plot holes, big or small, but no matter how big or small the holes hare, it's hard to deny the second half of the movie is full of them. Let's ignore the fact that the film pretty much only happens because of a ridiculous amount of coincidences (so this kid was molested but so was this kid and this one other guy is a suspect because he was molested by this priest guy who trapped this guy for molesting kids who may or may not have been trying to turn kids into molesters and so forth...). Let's ignore the fact that there's enough red herrings in the film to make Dan Brown wince.
The second half of the film pretty much is aggressively poorly written and goes out of its way to be as stupid as it possibly can, while trying to pass off as smart- which, if the reviews here are any indication, seems to have worked for the most part. Detective Loki, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, is set up to be this oh-so-perfect and excellent detective who apparently is infallible and has never left a case unsolved. Perhaps they named him Detective Loki because Marty Stu was too revealing. And strangely, we never get any evidence of this and we often see him making dumb decisions (like going twice into people's houses unattended, opening suspicious looking tote boxes that could be filled with something harmful- venomous snakes in this case). The aforementioned paedophile corpse found in the paedophile priest's basement has a bit where he discovers a maze necklace on said corpse (it's never explained why the priest tortured the kid rapist and murderer because HE HIMSELF IS A PAEDOPHILE) and passes it off as just something he wears, but then it takes a drawing just conveniently falling off his desk to make the connection? Oh, and what is it with this film's obsession with mazes? Bob draws them a lot and there's a bunch crudely etched on his wall, and Dano's character keeps repeating something like "There's a maze..." over and over. Then there's the scene during the ultra- lame twist where Melissa Leo, who apparently kidnapped the kids, forces Jackman to hide in a hole covered by a car... great! This must be the maze! But nope, it's just some hole. Oh, and what is this connection between Leo and Dano, and this Bob guy??? He buys kids clothes and splatters them with pigs blood and hides venomous snakes in his home as a ploy to trick the detectives and the families, but their connection is never revealed.
Perhaps why this is such a killer is because there's evidence that there's a great movie bursting to get out of here in this 152-minute mess. There's great acting by Hugh Jackman and Terrence Howard, there's some every pretty cinematography, Villenueve's direction is as tight as ever. I had high hopes for this film, especially being from Canada, where the director is from, however I doubt that it'll be as much of a hit with the audiences as Incendies was, because the film simply thinks it's being clever. But it isn't. And it's about as obvious as a light show at a Muse concert, to make matters worse.