Routine and decently made but familiar to the point of blandness

Rating: 6/10 (27 January 2014)

Prisoners (2013)
A highly rated movie at the moment, but be sure to know this is very well- worked territory, and it's a well made but conventionally made movie. There are some plot surprises but they won't be new ones. There is a detective (well played by Jake Gyllenhaal) but he's a familiar type. There is the parent (four parents, but one in particular, played by Hugh Jackman) who does some terrible things trying to find his daughter—but even this is now old territory (even Mel Gibson took that on).
You won't have to suffer the mistreatment of little kids here, which is something some directors would explore and abuse. This is a story about the urgent hunting of the kidnappers before time ran out. There is no real clock to heighten our anxiety, just the feeling that the longer it goes on the more likely the children aren't going to make it. Mostly we follow the detective around as he follows leads and instincts, and the one dad who has his own idea of who's to blame.
There is no good rationale for the kidnappings, either. Not money, which would have been easy, but some kind of religious freak craziness is to blame. An obsession with mazes creeps in, but even this we don't quite get. No, the specifics are endlessly avoided. Instead we are dependent on personality, and to some extent that works pretty well. It doesn't make for a whole movie, however.
Director Denis Villeneuve has an interesting resume, including the hard-hitting "Incendies" which has (unlike this movie) a clear and sensational plot line. I'm not sure what made his drag this movie to an hour and a half—some economy might have been the main thing it needed, though the lack of explanation almost makes it seem a half hour has been excised already.
Lots of people will not agree with me (apparently) but as a "useful" review I'm really trying to lay out the basic qualities that you can then judge for yourself. Bottom line? It's not boring even if it seems long, and it's a kind of film I like so I enjoyed it in a mild kind of way. That's a start!