We all are 'prisoners' in one form or another.

Rating: Null/10 (5 March 2014)

There are two incidents in this movie where people are taken as prisoners, the second resulting from the first, and that is certainly what the title refers to. But in a deeper level it plays on things inside us that we become prisoners of. It could be fear, or the need for revenge, or just how we look at others in the world. It is a deep and involving movie, but some parts are hard to watch.
It starts with a typical suburban family walking a few houses down the street to visit another family. After a while the two small girls ask permission to go back and get something, but they don't return. Then a frantic search fails to find them.
About the same time the teenagers had noticed an old RV parked on the street nearby, and now it was gone. Everyone suspected the person in the RV had taken the girls, so they search for him.
Hugh Jackman is Keller Dover and Terrence Howard is the neighbor Franklin Birch. The two girls taken are their young daughters, and the two of them get involved in the search, at times a bit violently. The mothers are Viola Davis as Nancy Birch and Maria Bello as Grace Dover.
The main investigator is Jake Gyllenhaal as Detective Loki. He goes about systematically doing his job, but is badgered by Keller who thinks he should crack down on the RV driver.
Paul Dano is good as the RV driver, Alex Jones.
SPOILERS: When Alex is found at a rest stop, for some reason he panics and crashes into some trees and is caught. But questioning him turns up nothing and he is released. Keller doesn't take this well, convinced that Alex is guilty he abducts him and imprisons him in a dilapidated building Keller owns. He tortures him in an attempt to get him to reveal the location of the two girls. In the end they are found held captive by a woman who over the years had taken and eventually killed a number of children. As the movie ends Keller is seen in the building where Alex is still being held, but the cops arrive and we sense Keller will have to answer for his lawlessness.