← Back to Reviews
 
PRISONERS
(directed by Denis Villeneuve, 2013)



SIGOURNEY WEAVER IS AN AUTISTIC WOMAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


And now for my Prisoners review.

Prisoners is the DARKEST movie my Sex God, Jake Gyllenhaal, has done yet, and I'm not forgetting Zodiac or even the brutal, troubling scenes in Brothers. DARKEST, but not as good as those two. I certainly enjoyed it a lot more than that last movie of Gyllenhaal's that came out last year -- End of Watch -- at least.



Prisoners deals with child abduction and the sick people who do it. Gyllenhaal plays Detective Loki, who is working to find two little girls who disappeared on Thanksgiving Day. One of the girls is the daughter of Hugh Jackman and Maria Bello and the other is the daughter of Terrence Howard and Viola Davis. A clue from Hugh Jackman's son, played by Dylan Minnette, leads them to an RV and a strange young man with a low IQ played by Paul Dano (the silent teen from Little Miss Sunshine). He is believed to be the abductor. Gyllenhaal questions him and sees nothing suspicious about him, so he sends him back to the home of his aunt (Melissa Leo) where he lives, but Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) does not believe he's innocent. He kidnaps Paul Dano's character and tortures him in a rundown building, hoping it will make him confess.

Prisoners is a long, but engaging movie. A mystery that is very intriguing -- who abducted these two girls? Was it Paul Dano? Was it somebody else? Are the girls alive or dead?



I liked the movie.... buttttttttt.... it doesn't really pay off well. The film is way too complex and complicated and everything just sort of collapses in the end. This feels like a movie that needed a few more rewrites. It's a GOOD movie -- but not a GREAT movie. I must say, though, I could easily rewatch it again right now. Maybe I'd pick up on some things I didn't notice before.

Jake Gyllenhaal... was Jake Gyllenhaal. The film kinda feels like a Silence of the Lambs clone and Jake Gyllenhaal is totally the Clarice Starling character. He isn't often his usual quirky and cute boyish self, except in his first scene at a chinese restaurant. But he's hot as Hell in this anyway, with nice slicked back hair, and he is yet again a cop, just like in his last movie, although this time he's more mature and serious on the job.



Hugh Jackman WAS A BEAST. The man really is Wolverine. But the film ends terribly for his character. This is one of the more tragic and awful things about Prisoners -- and yet, I also find it one of the most fascinating. Not gonna say what happens... and I hope you aren't automatically assuming I mean he gets killed or something... cause that may or may not be the case... but his character gets dropped and finished with too easily.

The abductor, or abductors, was chilling and really upped the disturbing factor in this movie -- but more could have been done. Prisoners gets mad props from me simply because it has Jake Gyllenhaal, of course, but it's also a fun, twisted, entertaining watch. It has all the right elements for a creep fest. There's even a scene where Jake Gyllenhaal has to walk around a bunch of slithery, slimy, big ass motherf**king SNAKES. Sssssssssss!!!!!!



But, Prisoners isn't perfect or monumental. It's a crime scene drama, complete with its own twisted surprise ending. And even though I love Jake Gyllenhaal... something about his movies are feeling very hokey to me. Like you can't take them seriously enough. I really hope Jake Gyllenhaal continues to make great movies and goes on to be an even bigger actor with age. I think he can do it. But I'd like to see him do something that REALLY makes him quite the leading man. Maybe it isn't time for him to reach that level, yet. But I think that time is getting near and I hope he'll do better movies than Prisoners after this.



Oh, and I must say -- at times, this movie felt like a Saw movie without Jigsaw around.