Prisoners

Prisoners (2013)

81% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 231 reviews)

Runtime: An overlong 153 minutes

Directed by: Denis Villeneuve

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Terrence Howard, Maria Bello, Melissa Leo

From: Warner Bros

Unfortunately, this is another case where I watch a heavily hyped movie from the past few years and I felt underwhelmed. I did not hate the movie... I just feel disappointed. I talk all about it below:

Man, I wish I could have loved this movie like most people do...

I was thinking of what to watch last night, and I was stumped. I certainly had no shortage of options. I won't go into all the machinations that led me to this, except that I realized the movie starts on Thanksgiving so what better weekend for me to check this out? I heard that this wasn't the easiest film to watch and I agree, although I've definitely had rougher experiences with films (yeah, I am referring to some examples from South Korea) and that was not my problem with this movie.

Things start off well enough. You get to see the anguish of both Hugh Jackman and Terrence Howard as they had their young daughters vanish in their neighborhood during Thanksgiving. You feel horrible for them as they can't do anything to help aside from talking to the police and search the area. You also see Jake Gyllenhaal (as Detective Loki; I heard the reason why he was given such a name. It's pretentious, not to mention giggle-worthy. I haven't even seen The Avengers but of course I am going to think of Tom Hiddleston wearing a black cloak) investigate the case. I am not quite sure if the procedural stuff we witness here is exactly like how the police really do it, but maybe things are different in Pennsylvania, I don't know. Even when Hugh Jackman does some rather preposterous s---, I realized that this movie was making a statement about religion (his character of Keller Dover was rather religious; him being a carpenter was not done by happenstance) and it's not the only time where this happens. It did not make for the most pleasant of viewing, but at least I was still engaged in the story and seeing who was behind it all. Then the final act hits...

Personally, finding out what the movie was all about and what exactly happened to those two little girls, it was so ludicrous, so goofy Hollywood BS, it soured the movie for me. It did not feel like a good reward for watching an overlong movie where Hugh Jackman acts like a real A-hole and Jake G. is a cop who is happy to bend or even break the rules, so it's not like there are plenty of sympathetic characters to go around. What doesn't help either is that the wives who had just lost their kids (Maria Bello and Viola Davis) were not portrayed in the best light either... they were irrational, shrill harpies who did some inexplicable things... I mean, I understand going crazy because of such an unspeakable tragedy, but how they acted went beyond that; they acted pretty stupid because the script asked them to.

It's a shame, as it is well-shot (the cinematographer was Roger Deakins, so of course it was. He was a big asset in keeping me engaged even as things got more and more inane) and the cast does a great job with what they were given. It's just that the story is so absurd, I couldn't believe it. I understood what the message of the movie was; it was as obvious as a blow from a hammer to your face, so it was impossible to miss. I just found it to be hokey nonsense. I'll stick to the true crime shows that are on TV. At least they show real life criminal acts.

Unfortunately this is also part of what happens in Hollywood too often these days, which is “stories that make no damn sense if you even do a modicum of examination of the plot”. To mention a similarly dour and overlong movie from recent times, Gone Girl was awful, and the plot was so bad, even random fools who still comment on the Internet Movie Database noted accurately how the story is as thin as tissue paper and it completely falls apart upon closer examination. This movie wasn't that bad; Gone Girl was a miserable experience for me to watch... at least I could watch this and not have the desire to shut it off in disgust. It's just that the plot holes were pretty obvious and there were way too many coincidences. The story could have presented its themes and message in a small scale way where the culprit or culprits weren't so unbelievable, nor make me feel really sorry for the family of Keller Dover in that I wouldn't want a nutjob like him as a dad. Subtlety would have really helped here.

The only other movie from the director I saw was Sicario; I thought it was a lot better but its dourness and mean-spirited nature (albeit in a different way than the dourness and mean-spirted nature we got in this flick) means it's not something I'm going to revisit often. Thankfully, Arrival sounds like something more palpable to my tastes so it will be something I watch in the future.