Great movie, but too dark and too serious.

Rating: 10/10 (27 April 2015)

Now, I move on to PRISONERS, directed by Denis Villenueve from a script written by Aaron Guzikowski.
I am going to try to keep this review a short one because I know this movie is very dark and serious and can get very disturbing and emotional in a few areas during the 153-minute feature running time. There will be a few spoilers in this review, so if you haven't seen the film, you may want to.
PRISONERS just blew me away with it's story. Aaron Guzikowski wrote a screenplay that is just really amazing with great dialogue and a great plot in this film. The story focuses on the abduction of two young girls in Pennsylvania and the police's subsequent search. Keller Dover and his wife Grace attends a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of their neighbors Franklin and Nancy Birch and both families' younger daughters, Anna Dover and Joy Birch goes missing. Detective David Loki arrests and questions the driver of a suspicious vehicle, Alex Jones and Dover attacks Jones after he is released.
Loki is doing different cases, but Dover decides to take matters into his own hands and tortures Alex Jones for answers, but he denies that he is Alex Jones and claims that he escaped from a maze. Dover visits Jones' aunt, Holly and she tells that she and her husband were religious until their son died of cancer. Joy Birch is found drugged but alive. Dover visits her in the hospital and Joy tells him "You were there".
Loki searches for Dover and discovers Jones. Dover goes to the Jones' house to get information, but Holly pulls a gun out on him. She makes him put handcuffs on his hands and drinks some kind of poisoning, but I'll get to that in a minute. She explains that her and her late husband abducted many children as part of their "war on God" after their son died. She shoots him in the leg and forces him to get inside a concealed pit and imprisons him in the pit, where he finds a whistle belonging to his daughter.
Anna is found with Holly, but Anna is taken to the hospital and Holly is killed. Outside the Jones' house, Loki hears Dover's labored whistling from the pit that he is imprisoned in.
I thought the pacing and dialogue was a little confusing, but also really amazing throughout the movie and that is an incredible but hard and challenging thing to pull off, but a lot of movies has done this really great.
***SPOILER ALERT!*** Like I said in the plot, Dover is imprisoned by Holly and this was the main issue I had with the film. Because for two reasons:  1. She imprisons him in a concealed pit, makes him drink some kind of poison. I don't know what it is, but it's all black. She makes him put handcuffs on his hands and shoots him in the leg, forcing him to get inside the pit. I think this could have been done better with music in the scene at least.
 2. The ending was a little confusing and I only watched this movie once, but I think the end is there just to set up a sequel.
The acting is just amazing. Hugh Jackman deserves a lot of credit for his performance as Keller Dover. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Detective Loki wonderfully. Terrence Howard, Viola Davis and Maria Bello are all great in this film. Paul Dano plays Alex Jones and he is great in the part that he had to play and he was an amazing casting choice for the film.
The only performance that I had trouble with was Academy Award winner Melissa Leo's character, Holly Jones. She had to wear make-up for the part, but she is just scary as heck in the part that she plays and what she did to Hugh Jackman's character did not seemed like a very good idea at all.
This is the reason why this film appeared on my Top 10 Overrated Movies list is because of the ending, which I just mentioned. This movie really deserved the Oscar for Best Cinematography and Best Picture, but the Academy only chooses great movies.
PRISONERS is a great film, and I will forever be angry that this did not win an Academy Award, but Frozen wins two Oscars? That is just crazy! This film was originally rated NC-17 for "substantial disturbing violent content and explicit images", but was re-edited to secure the R rating for "disturbing violent content include torture and language throughout". I am so glad that this got the R rating because I would not have been able to watch this film if it was NC-17.
The music is just amazing. The cinematography, editing, production and costume designs are just amazing.
Overall, I love PRISONERS. Even though the ending got on my nerves a little bit, I still love what this movie does and what it shows. This is one crime - drama / mystery - suspense thriller that I don't think gets enough credit.
My rating is going to be the rating of 10 out of 10. It's a perfect movie and you should see it. Sure, it is graphic, disturbing, emotional and violent in some areas, but if you can look past some of that, you may be able to find one great drama that will satisfy you.
PRISONERS is a great film that will blow you away and the performances of Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Melissa Leo, Maria Bello, Viola Davis, Terrence Howard and Paul Dano in this film will certainly blow you away from beginning to end and you will not be able to take your eyes off your television screen from start to finish once this movie begins and once it ends after 2 hours.