PRISONERS

I was really excited to see Prisoners. The trailer sold it to me, the cast sold it to me, the comparisons to Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs sold it to me -on paper it really is a sure winner.

Prisoners tells the story of Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman). After his six-year-old daughter and her friend go missing, he takes matters into his own hands as the police detective (Jake  Gyllenhaal) appears to be pursuing the wrong leads. How far will a desperate father go to save his child?

The film gets off to a strong start; a cozy, homely, family-orientated opening of the girl and her friend's families spending Thanksgiving together - an environment that instantly connects the viewer to nostalgic festive memories of their own (whether Thanksgiving or Christmas!) and makes the families relatable and accessible. Just an average Thanksgiving with an average family and it is this averageness that makes the girls disappearance all the more poignant as it instills the concept that it could happen to you.

An average family

It gets to the action right away: the girls are taken and the main suspect is identified very early on in the film, which is an interesting albeit welcome technique as it means that the main story begins without any fuss or fluff leading up to it. With the audience finding out information at the same speed as Jackman's Keller, the entire cinema were on the edge of their seat with their heart in their mouth within thirty minutes of the film's beginning.

However, at a needless two and a half hours long, the initial excitement gradually starts to fade as the film goes from a fast-paced, high-tension, emotion-driven thriller to a story so saturated with 'twists' and curveballs that you eventually just get a bit bored of it all. Arguably attempting (and failing) a Christopher Nolan-esque shock-fest, director Denis Villeneuve dedicates far too much time attempting to shock the audience with plot-twists galore and in doing so the film starts to drag and the actual reveal at the end of the film is underwhelming  and feels a bit rushed. As a viewer, you feel a bit cheated that you have dedicated two and a half hours to this film only for the revelation to lack depth and detail; alongside half a dozen other curveballs that had been thrown in without being given a full explanation. Don't get me wrong - you know the basics of what has happened; you know the skeleton of each turn of events and every character that we are introduced to but that is all we get - the bare minimum amount of detail with absolutely none of the fleshing out that makes other such films so great.

I personally found the big reveal a bit silly and any detail that was given was only the repetition of hints and tips that had been scattered throughout the film and I had actually picked up on, so nothing new for the viewer to learn. I feel that I desperately wanted more to be added to the reveal in order for the film to reclaim some credibility - it felt lazy and half-assed and I feel that it was only included in order to shock the audience, not to give maximum impact.

The brilliant cast ultimately carry the film with Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal both giving powerful, believable performances as two totally different characters in roles that I haven't really seen them take on before. The true star of the show though is without a doubt Paul Dano. The mute from Little Miss

Paul Dano has definitely grown up!

Sunshine has well and truly grown up with a performance that was so raw and so disturbing that I actually felt my blood boiling with rage. As the main suspect in the case, Alex, Dano was unrecognizable and the fact that I hated his character with an unsympathetic passion is only a testament to what a convincing performance he gave.

Although Prisoners was much longer than necessary (and to it's detriment), it did maintain my interest. Admittedly by the end of the film I was much less involved than I was in the first hour and a half but the interest was still there; I would not have been able to leave the cinema without learning of the story, no matter how disappointing the story turned out to be, and the strong performances are what made it so watchable whilst the narrative was lagging. I also really enjoyed the final scene, it was an ending that I didn't see coming and although I feel that the ultimate outcome is obvious to the viewer it is always good for a film to end with a collective gasp that fills the cinema as Villeneuve clearly couldn't resist throwing in one final surprise.

To conclude, the film-makers should have known better than to make Prisoners so long; it is common fact that if a film exceeds a certain amount of time it is near-impossible to maintain the same level of quality throughout. Some sections of the film are brilliant with so much attention to detail but others are underwhelming and overlooked and should probably have ended up on the cutting room floor. The film's reveal is trying to be much more intelligent than it is and feels like a bit of a desperate cop-out in order to shock the audience, but the final scene made up for this in a way. Many elements of the actual narrative are highly controversial and can spark many interesting debates; it is interesting and at times shocking but it simply does not come close to the likes of Silence of the Lambs,Se7en, or any other thriller classic that you may have heard it be compared to.

As a relatively exciting watch I give Prisoners ★★★★☆  but if Villeneuve left his Nolan aspirations at home and followed a more personal style rather than trying to make the film into something that it is not, it would have been miles better.

Prisoners is in cinemas nationwide from tomorrow:  Friday 27th September!

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