Great story, but many flaws

Rating: 7/10 (23 September 2013)

Prisoners was a gritty and engaging, child kidnap film that got our attention early and kept it until the end. However, it had many needless quirks and meaningless distractions and misdirections that it was difficult at times to follow what was necessary to the story and what was not. The highlight of the film was Hugh Jackman's character Keller, the stressed-out and angry father of one of two kidnapped little girls in Conyers, Georgia. This father's anger over losing his little girl drove the story and gave it its powerful energy that had all eyeballs glued to the screen throughout, which is the true +mark of a successful suspense story.
Bad weather prevailed in this gloomy story that was so full of uncaring, devious and sick human behavior that it almost made you ashamed to be one of the same species. The entire cast did a very effective job, Maria Bello as Keller's depressive wife, Paul Dano as the uber-creepy suspect nearly tortured to death, Melissa Leo as his psychopathic aunt/mother(?), Terrence Howard as a soft and sensitive black man and neighbor whose child was also taken, and Viola Davis as his so sad, grieving wife. Jake Gyllenhaal was Loki, the also sad but serious and dedicated case detective whose outward bland calm was belied by an eye-blinking facial tick that well showed the giant stress he was constantly under to solve the case for his incompetent and pushy, but very antagonistic and unhelpful, captain.
As the story has been detailed by others, my concern was for the details in the telling of the story. The first half of the film was terrific and built the story effectively and emotionally, but the second half had so many unnecessary twists and incomplete explanations of what really happened that it left me with a feeling of "that could have been done much better".
I had the case figured out much faster than Loki did, as he missed the main clue from an earlier murder that would have solved the case if he were a better and "more observant" detective(isn't that their job?). That he missed it was the main flaw in the story to me, but I was also irked at the case conclusion that was merely flashed too-briefly in newspaper headlines. That part left me with....."That's it?" IMO, it was a too-quick and unsatisfying resolution to the long and harrowing, two and a half hour film story. However, the cut-off ending of the film that others have complained about was very impactful even if what led to it was tipped off earlier, thus very predictable.
All in all, great acting in a flawed but very interesting and foreboding film story made my rating of it a strong 7. Warning... bloody human torture scenes and violent psychopathic behavior.