Brilliant Suspenseful Drama

Rating: 9/10 (4 January 2015)

Prisoners explores the various talents and relies on its leads Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal, and they deliver great performances in this suspenseful crime thriller. It's Thanksgiving in suburban Pennsylvania when two little girls go missing. Jackman is riveting as Keller Dover, a tightly wound, deeply religious, and apocalyptically inclined survivalist father of 6-year-old Anna. Bello, as his wife Grace, is less prone to the creeping, religiously tinged paranoia, but utterly believable in her shroud of shattered normalcy.
Also missing is 7-year-old Joy, the daughter of next-door neighbors Franklin and Nancy Birch (Howard and Davis). Gyllenhaal is the twitchy, blinking Detective Loki, who is called in to investigate, and Dano plays a mysterious RV-driving drifter who has mental health issues and is quickly nabbed as the obvious suspect. But, as in the aforementioned Zodiac (which also starred Gyllenhaal), few things are what they at first seem.
Prisoners runs at 153 minutes but watching and paying close attention, the film does not feel nearly as long, and every minute within the second half is entertaining, and gripping. Much complaint at how the ending's last 20-30 minutes are but I am in agreement that it is not therefore predictable but a lasting touch. There are several clues that are shown before then, and it is a great watch to see the final end result.