Prisoners is a
thriller of the variety that wants you to contemplate how you would react if
put in place of the film’s characters. It does not rely on flashy, fast-paced
editing to keep things moving, actually avoiding such gimmicks to make sure
that the audience is forced to take in every dread-filled moment it delivers.
Denis Villeneuve is a Canadian director, whose Incendies a couple years ago was met with international acclaim.
With Prisoners, he has crossed over
to English-language expectations, is working with a large, grade-A cast and is
still holding on to his deliberately slow-moving style. This is a bold move on
his part, because tradition tells us that, even though slow and steady may win
the race as far as critical consensus is concerned, movies must be quick, jumpy
and clear-cut to be successful. In theory, today’s ADD filmgoers should not
have the patience to endure all two and a half hours of Prisoners, which is why I’m so pleasantly surprised by its enormous
success. It would be nice to know whether people are flocking to it because of
what it is or because of what they thought it would be.
The story of the film concerns two families, each comprised
of a father, mother, older child and younger child. One night, during a
gathering between the two families, both of the younger children completely
disappear. The police are brought in and one of the fathers gets into repeated
trouble for getting in the way of the investigation. He has become completely
convinced for various reasons that a simple-minded man-child has kidnapped his
daughter and that the police are deliberately ignoring this fact. Therefore, as
the days go on and neither child makes a reappearance, the father takes matters
into his own hands.
The screenplay here was written by Aaron Guzikowski and,
though I don’t really want to throw anybody under the bus, any failures on the
part of the film can be attributed to its writing. This is a difficult film to
swallow, not because it isn’t well-made or even because it’s too harsh on the
viewer, but because it’s perhaps a little too blunt for its own good. The story
is the sort of thing more straight-forward horror movies are made of, in that
the viewer can feel the terror of a missing child mixed with the possibility of
murder or, worse still, molestation.
It also follows similar guidelines usually used by mystery
movies: following the detective around, gathering clues and suspicions, and
letting the viewer try to figure out the hidden antagonist before the big,
final revelation. My problem with Prisoners
is that, despite these elements, the story never reaches the full potential of
either format. It becomes almost immediately distracted by its ideas that everyone is evil and not just the
criminals, and proceeds to beat us over the head with this idea for most of the
runtime, leaving the mystery to brief interludes of afterthought.
That’s another problem, too. Literally every character in
the film turns out to be insane to some degree, to the point that the whole
production becomes a simple series of crazy people doing crazy things because
they’re crazy. Since there is very little plot as far as things happening for a
great narrative purpose goes, watching the movie feels a bit like reading those
less interesting news stories where people do bad things and that’s the end of
it. We already know people are naturally bad and we sense the film’s conclusion
long before it arrives, so since the movie offers little else than these insights,
it becomes quickly tiresome.
What there is to enjoy in the film is the admirably steady
direction, Roger Deakins’ hypnotic photography and the expectedly flawless
performances from all the well-established leads. I was most impressed by Jake
Gyllenhaal as the detective who knows how to do his job (He’s solved every one
of his past cases.), but who can’t seem to get the understanding and
cooperation he needs from either his superiors or the people he’s helping.
Watch Gyllenhaal in the role and you see the embodiment of patience,
frustration and exhaustion. Most actors would attempt to juggle these emotions,
but Gyllenhaal is all of them at once and as such, never falters (Notice the little,
infrequent spasms his eyelids have. It made me wonder if the character ever
sleeps. It was a convincing touch.).
Another great, though small performance is given by Viola
Davis, that rising powerhouse of an actress whose brief appearance provides the
best moment in the film, the only moment that actually managed to surprise me.
I was the least impressed by star Hugh Jackman who never quite seems real to me
in any of his performances. I guess his experience as a stage actor betrays
him, because he is always making me wish he’d tone it down a bit. I understand
that actors have to go to the places their characters take them, but did
Jackman really need to go as far as he did here? All I can say is that he
truthfully annoyed me. Also, I suppose I should mention Paul Dano and Melissa Leo, who do what they can with their characters, which were too ridiculous to salvage.
All in all, Prisoners
is far from a bad movie, but is altogether too frustrating to be a good one. I
don’t have a problem with movies being frustrating, assuming that some sort of
satisfaction can be had on either a cinematic or aesthetic level. For me, there
was plenty to appreciate in the acting and pacing, but the final product just
wasn’t satisfying. I don’t really know if a truly good movie could have been
made from the same material. I guess this is as good as it could be.
7/10
No comments:
Post a Comment