Atmospheric, High Quality, Well Acted, but -

Rating: 7/10 (3 January 2014)

Beautifully filmed, appropriately atmospheric, impeccably acted by Jackman, Gyllenhaal, and others... I enjoyed the first two hours of this movie immensely. But then... towards the end, my wife and I both coincidentally realized: 1) This was a very long movie, and some scenes didn't need to be there, while, 2) the movie skipped past some things it could have explored a bit more 3) I felt the ending left us hanging. It was a bit like a recent Steven King novel... enjoyable as hell but then the loose ends just sort of flop away at the end and leave it to you to work out in your own head. The moral of this story is very unclear. Yet... paradoxically... that's also what I like about this movie. It makes me think about justice, and what can happen when we take it into our own hands. Things that seem so clear can be so murky. The major twist at the end of this movie could have been handled better (the connection between the missing boy and the presumed kidnapper of the girls)- it was almost an afterthought. My other complaint was the bizarre way the movie DROPPED the scene where Gyllenhaal discovers Jackman torturing the boy... WHY was this scene CUT, then Jackman is free, but then... arggg. Just a frustrating ending. I half respect that, but half of me feels it was manipulative and poorly handled. This is a hard movie to review. I'm left with a movie I can recommend, but one that is almost as frustrating as it is engaging.