Deep, absorbing thriller digging further than you might have expected it to

Rating: 9/10 (12 May 2014)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) and his wife Grace (Maria Bello) are plunged in to every parent's worst nightmare when their daughter goes missing, along with the daughter of their close friends Franklin (Terence Howard) and Nancy (Viola Davis.) The finger of suspicion ends up pointing at Alex (Paul Dano), a local impaired boy, but due to a lack of evidence, Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), the detective in charge of the investigation, is forced to let him go, much to Keller's chagrin. He takes the law in to his own hands in a desperate bid to find out where his daughter is, but nothing is quite as it seems and the real reason behind the girl's disappearance may be deeper buried than they thought.
Sometimes, a simple, straight-forward story can work on far more levels and have a lot more to it if there are some strong human dynamics behind the scenes of it, i.e. in this case the ultimate nightmare of any parent, the loss of a child. Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners sets itself on a much grander scale than your average staple thriller, driven as it is by a strong sense of dark, forbidding atmosphere and stark exploration of human emotions and dynamics. In short, it has a lot more going for it than your typical thriller of it's ilk, filling every second of it's two and a half hour running time with hidden depths that just keep on coming, even if at times it all just does feel a little over whelming.
While it's cascading down this emotional roller coaster ride, it's careful never to forget or unduly expose the mystery element to the story, keeping up the suspense over the missing girls and who or even what could be behind their disappearance. For material of this length, strong performances are a no brainer, and indeed we have revelatory turns from lead stars Gyllenhaal, turning in maybe his most intense, driven performance yet as the detective under pressure from others that never lets up, driven mad by constant potential break-throughs that lead nowhere, but it's Jackman as the tormented parent who possibly makes the biggest impression, channeling his Wolverine anger into something that will gain him more appreciation with a different audience.
In aiming that bit higher than your typical thriller fare, Prisoners may be a bit too much for some to take in, and occasionally it is a little pretentious and see-through in trying to be deep, but it is no less of an accomplished effort that succeeds in what it sets out to do. ****