Prisoners(2013): Review

   This past weekend, while awaiting the end of Breaking Bad we still manged to get out and catch a movie.  This weekend we saw, Prisoners with Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal,Terrence Howard, and Paul Dano.  This film is about a kidnapping that takes place in Pennsylvania around Thanksgiving and how far a parent will go to find their kid when the bureaucracy that surrounds law enforcement fails to bring about any results.

The maze in the "O" is a major plot point.

Hugh Jackman is a good actor, Wolverine and X-Men films may be what got him in the limelight but their is no denying his acting skills. He doesn't disappoint in this film either in his portrayal of concerned Dad, Keller Dover who's gut tells him that the suspected man caught in an RV where his and his neighbor's daughter where last seen knows something about his missing daughters whereabouts. The man, Alex Jones is played by Paul Dano, who seems to have made a career out of playing annoying weirdos that you just can't help but want to punch in the face.  He is arrested in the film by Jake Gyllenhaal who plays Detective Loki, (no relation to Avengers villain) but cannot be held for lack of evidence.  When he gets released and Dover has a tantrum and attacks him he says something that lets him know he knows more than he's telling the police and the film takes off from there.  What you just read doesn't really spoil anything for you because from that point on it's a guessing game and trail of evidence on Loki's part to catch the kidnapper and find the kids, while Dover deals his own version of justice to extract information from the creepy looking Jones.  I have only seen Dano in one other film, There Will be Blood and he seemed...intrusive in that film which is why I make the "punch in the face" comment.

Scenes, with Jones and Dover are violent more in the sense you see the damage after it is dealt and Jackman goes into his best berserker mode without pulling any Wolverine character traits into this role.  It runs like a good episode of Law and Order: SVU if you were ever into it, if not it makes for a good detective film for fans of detective fiction.  It's rated "R" for violence and language and about two hours long, it's worth watching in the theaters if you don't feel like waiting for home video.