Prisoners Are Pre-sinners.

Rating: 7/10 (2 April 2017)

Once you get the full picture of this film, it all starts to make sense in a very smart manner, a manner that during the course of the film itself, feels somewhat elongated and confusing.
Who is Alex, who is he protecting and why after all that torture? Then Taylor comes along and you feel that he is the one being protected, yet, his IQ seems no higher than that of Alex's. Then you have the corpse, a disappearing uncle, an arbitrary abductee, a priest with a crypt like room, an old woman who doesn't seem as bothered as she should be about her seemingly missing nephew and hell, even a detective who has a suspicious 100% solved cases track record.
All that very "up in the air" type of set up, during a 150 minute running time and a very eerie approach from the director and composer creates the needed suspense true, but also, there was a little bit of confusion or perhaps, impatience accompanied with the enthrallment, that causes the chosen angle of the reveal to be marginally underwhelming, but still ultimately, very impressive.
The performances were great, from everyone involved (Gyllenhaal's exccessive blinking was a nice touch, though at times he'd abandon it) and the story was executed very competently, especially given the films' title. There is a chain of prisoners, in plain sight and also, hidden in plain sight.
A crafty 7.4/10.