An 8 point freaking 2 out of 10 rating for this lame movie? Really?

Rating: 4/10 (22 September 2013)

A movie that is, in my humble opinion, toeing the line between So-so and bad? What happened to audiences today? Have you all lost your minds? Is the government already succeeding at dumbing-down the masses? OK, sure, the performances were solid. But what I saw in the end was great talent wasted on an insanely contrived film.
We all know what the story is about and the premise is rather primal, I must admit, encouraging me to see the film. But it was poorly written. POORLY. It started with the characters then snowballed down the hill to a contrivance cesspool where it drowned.
I didn't like any of the characters, except for Alex, played by Paul Dano. The second character I empathized with was Detective Loki (Gyllenhaal), who almost went on my list of "Idiots the world would be better off without," but he avoided it by really trying to find the girls and practically being tormented by Dover (Jackman), father of one of the girls abducted.
Now Dover was one of the worst characters in the film, probably in movie history. He was written for us to connect to, whether we disagreed with his methods or not. But in the end, he was basically jeopardizing the investigation. His level of stupidity was dangerous, to himself and everyone around him. So, he may not be a thinking man. I could buy that. Then could he at least smarten up somewhere towards the end of the film? Where was his character arc, his moment of truth? Are we to assume he actually learned something as events unfolded? Never once did he admit his humility and humanity, and yield his control of events over to fate. It could've taken 5 seconds. But he didn't. I'm not going to give away too much, but he was angry and desperate until the end.
Then you had Dover's band of douchebags, like the Birch's, who also lost their daughter and are seemingly close friends with the Dovers. They most likely shared stupid pills as well. There wasn't a single useful person in the film. Loki came close but he did things I couldn't imagine anyone with his expertise, who supposedly solved every crime or missing person case he ever worked (not clear as to the kind of detective he was), doing the things he did. Also, he rarely called for backup or assistance, and don't give me that malarkey about the town's underfunded police department. Did everyone have to be brain-dead and desperate like Dover? To answer the previous question, yes, they had to be this way otherwise things would have had to happen differently, and it could've ended badly like how things happen in real life sometimes. But, as a writer, when you intend on something happening one way to get the result you want, most likely a happy ending, then you have to have characters who can comply, even at their own detriment, and that's where contrivances find their home and breed.
The film had way too many wasted moments. Most of it did nothing to move the story along. Some lines, like the "solved every case" line regarding Loki's illustrious career as a police officer, not only made me chuckle but they felt more like set pieces, like the blue lamp on Dover's end table. Other wasted elements in the film were like red herrings that only added the extra 30 minutes to the already long movie.
Also, the antagonist's agenda was quite ridiculous, as most have been in recent Hollywood movies. They're now very roundabout and overly complicated, making them ridiculous, instead of more direct approaches. The bad guys are working way too hard to reach their ultimate goal. I thought the hard work was supposed to be reserved for the good guys. "Rage against God"? Really? That makes as much sense as going through the trouble to control the money and assets of all the local billionaires, taking power away from the wealthy and giving it to the the persecuted, all to create anarchy just before blowing up the city, and making the town's wounded hero watch it all from some prison pit in nowhere land. Oh wait...