"Prisoners" will captivate any parent and thrill any audience.

Rating: 7/10 (20 October 2015)

This may sound obvious or trite, but it truly is a parent's worst nightmare: Your child just disappears, suddenly and without a trace. That's the scenario in the crime drama/thriller "Prisoners" (R, 2:33).
When the young daughters of two neighbors go out to play after their families share Thanksgiving dinner together and then no one can find the girls, the panic is immediate and gut-wrenching. The helplessness of these two sets of parents (Hugh Jackman and Maria Bello as Keller and Grace Dover and Terrence Howard and Viola Davis as Franklin and Nancy Birch) is compounded when the police release a person of interest named Alex Jones (played brilliantly by Paul Dano) for lack of evidence. Despite the fact that Alex has the mental capacity of a 10-year-old, Keller is convinced that Alex knows something. He takes matters into his own hands and goes much farther than even the most devoted of parents could imagine. Keller is willing to do anything, and I mean ANYTHING, to extract the information he needs to find these two little girls. Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) is doing what he can to solve the case, and even seems willing to go a little outside the law to do it, but keeps coming up empty.
The tension gradually but steadily builds as these parents know that time is running out for their missing children. Clues in the case are scant and hints as to where this story is going are there on the screen, but seem too trivial to matter – until they do. The plot twists and ultimate reveals are shocking, but the film's real power is in the questions it forces us to ask – and keep asking after the film is over. The script is smart enough to provide us sufficient closure to justify the emotional investment we've made in this story, but still leaves it open-ended enough to give us something to think about after the credits roll. The unusually long run time may make you feel like a prisoner, but the complex, well-directed and very well-acted story (mostly) justifies the film's length. "B+"