Prisoners - 2013


Prisoners is the new Hugh Jackman movie with Jake Gyllenhaal, Terrance Howard, and Viola Davis about the abduction of two young girls on Thanksgiving and the effect it has on everyone involved in the case from the families, to the investigating detective, to the suspect.  The film was directed by Denis Villeneuve.  I'll only tell you as much as you can get from the trailer, but Kellar Dover (Jackman) has his daughter and his friends daughter kidnapped from their own neighborhood.  When a suspect is taken into custody that Dover feels took his daughter but has to be let free because of not enough evidence Dover takes matters into his own hands and kidnaps the suspected kidnapper.  He then takes things beyond the law in an attempt to find is daughter and her friend alive if possible.  As this is happening the detective assigned the case, Det. Loki (Gyllenhaal) is turning over everything in his path to try to at the very least find out what happened to those two girls.

Overall this is a great thriller.  The cast of this film is a who's who of heavy hitters in the drama department of Hollywood.  I would recommend this film to anyone what enjoys movies like The Bone Collector, dark thrillers that keep you guessing and you don't know who to suspect till the end of the film.  This is a dark film with perhaps the darkest of subjects being its about bad things happening to children.  So, if you are the kind of person that can get really down after watching a movie with a dark or sad subject this movie isn't for you.  For the rest of us, this is the best thriller I have seen in a long time.  I truly didn't see the ending coming which is rare for me because I can usually call it very early in a film.  At several parts throughout the film you suspect multiple characters, even characters you won't think it's possible to think it's them.  This film is up there with what I think is the best thriller of all time M, a film that also has to do about the loss of children.  It seems that the darkest characters make for the bet thrillers.  The title really sums up this film because the kidnapping turns every character in this film into a prisoner of some kind and it will cross your mind as you watch the film.