Picture it, if you can: Thanksigiving, 2013. Keller Dover and his family are on their way to their friends, the Birches, for dinner. They’re not going very far, just down the street.
We’re in America, not quite near a major city, but not quite in the middle, either. A relatively safe environment.
Keller’s a blue-collar man, a religious man…a survivalist. When we first meet him, he is praying the Our Father, teaching his teenaged son how to hunt deer. He wants to instill in his kid a sense of respect for all creatures while ensuring that he be ready for anything. “Pray for the best, but prepare for the worst” is his go-to.
It’s quite the quaint set-up the one that Aaron Guzikowski writes for Academy Award-nominated helmer Denis Villeneuve (Incendies) to direct as Prisoners, this season’s most quietly riveting dramatic thriller, gets underway.
What could possibly go wrong.
What does is Keller’s young daughter Anna goes AWOL, as does the Birches’ kid. Some time between dessert and after-diner play, the girls disappear.
Hugh Jackman plays Keller in the film, and right away, given his loving shortness toward his family (Maria Bellow portrays his wife, Grace, while Dylan Minnette, from TV’s Lost and the upcoming Labor Day, plays their son, Ralph), he comes off as a little unsympathetic.
Until he doesn’t.
Hugs and cuddles he ain’t, but Keller lives for his family. The man’s gruffness comes fully front and center when he starts dealing with the police, whom, as embodied by Jake Gyllenhaal’s Det. Loki, he feels could be doing more to find the girls.
That is the conflict within the conflict of Prisoners, a film that for the longest time totally leads you down a path that is somewhat as frustrating as the one charted by its characters. Why is Keller being such a short-fused hardass? Is he that blinded by shock that he is unwilling to consider the police, indeed, may have the wrong guy in the creep that Paul Dano plays? And what’s up with Loki? He’s a lone wolf-type like Keller, but, hey, he also has a heckuva lot of tats. Should we trust him?
The Awesome Aussie and my Gyllen-yum break new ground for themselves as the desperate father trying to find his daughter by any means possible and as the methodical and seemingly (un)bothered cop on the case, respectively. Jackman received his first Oscar nom earlier this year, for doing something we all knew he could in Les Misérables, but I would love it he got his second one in 2014 for this simmering powerhouse performance. The rage and determination with which he realizes Keller are matched by the grit that Gyllenhaal gives to Loki.
The pair is mesmerizing on that screen. They may have few scenes together, but when they do, it’s like, oh boy.
Prisoners is a surprising film, and not just ’cause of its third-act twists and turns. It is a confronting proposition. Here’s a man who will stop at nothing to get to the truth, and what he does in his quest is highly questionable. They don’t make ’em like this that much anymore (I mean, smart, engrossing mid-range films for grown-ups), but thanks to strong supporting turns by Terrence Howard and Viola Davis as the Birches, and Melissa Leo as Dano’s aunt, especially, it all pays off in the end.
Well. Until an Inception-style head-scratcher of an ending and fade to black that literally will have you jumping from the edge of your seat.
My Rating ****
Photo: Warner Bros.
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