Prisoners (2013)
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
After his six-year-old daughter is abducted, a desperate father takes justice into his own hands when he loses faith in the detective leading the investigation, setting both men on a collision course as the search descends into obsession and moral compromise.
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29 films that influenced Prisoners
What critics say influenced Prisoners
But like Clint Eastwood's Mystic River , to which it's been compared, Prisoners is so artfully shaped and forcefully developed that objections fade.
He fares impressively in the film, which is reminiscent of “Mystic River,” “In the Bedroom” and the crime dramas of David Fincher.
Villeneuve, who directed the fascinating 2010 film Incendies, plays with echoes of many of the better crime films of the past two decades, including The Vanishing, Mystic River , Gone Baby Gone , and, most notably, David Fincher's multiple contributions to the genre.
Along the route, the tone does shift from taut procedural (in the vein of, say, Zodiac) to something a little more melodramatic (think of the breathless Mystic River).
Shot in the hues of a cold rain by Roger A. Deakins ("No Country for Old Men," "Skyfall"), the film's missing-child-in-a-close-knit-community-with-secrets story is reminiscent of "Mystic River" while the police investigation in a rural blue collar town has the flavor of "Silence of the Lambs."
Prisoners is a heavy movie exploring serious themes, similar to the contemporary prestige procedurals Zodiac and Mystic River .
It’s something close in style to Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991) — so close that it borrows a trick or two from that film.
The other superb movie Prisoners reminded me of, even though it’s not really very similar at all, is The Silence of the Lambs.
The movie's pop Guignol recalls The Silence of the Lambs , and also draws on David Fincher's Zodiac .
In so many Hollywood films about child kidnapping, “RANSOM,” “MAN ON FIRE,” “TAKEN” and “THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS,” to name just a few, the mothers of the missing children are concerned – nothing more.
But come the climactic confrontation—the best bearding-the-demon-in-its-lair scenes since The Silence of the Lambs—the film has won back its credit.
That said, the film isn't for the squeamish as it features scenes of domestic torture and goes down some of the same dark alleys of the human psyche that the likes of "Se7en" and "The Silence of the Lambs" featured so many years ago.
And it achieves its art-house bona fides by borrowing from the vengeful-parent motif of the 2001 In the Bedroom.
He fares impressively in the film, which is reminiscent of “Mystic River,” “In the Bedroom” and the crime dramas of David Fincher.
Fully deserving of mention in the same breath as “Seven,” “Mystic River” and “In the Bedroom,” this Sept. 20 Warners release may prove too intense for some viewers, but should ride strong reviews and word of mouth to above-average R-rated returns.
In “In the Bedroom,” a much superior film about a decent, law-abiding man who takes revenge on his son’s killer, the horror was in seeing how a good man could be twisted into a savagery beyond his own comprehension.
Villeneuve, who directed the fascinating 2010 film Incendies, plays with echoes of many of the better crime films of the past two decades, including The Vanishing, Mystic River , Gone Baby Gone , and, most notably, David Fincher's multiple contributions to the genre.
It joins films like “Mystic River” and “Gone Baby Gone” as touchstone works about such tragedies.
It's an anguished ordeal of a movie, its two and a half hours soaked with freezing rain, anxiety and nods to Silence of The Lambs, Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and everything Michael Haneke ever did.
Its child abduction story might seem to put it alongside the likes of Clint Eastwood's Mystic River or Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone.
Admirers of Clint Eastwood’s “Mystic River” and Ben Affleck’s “Gone Baby Gone” – films that deserved more awards season acclaim than they received – will feel right at home here.
It may not have the endlessly pummeling effect of Mystic River or Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone, but in terms of child-abduction thrillers, it's engaging and gut-wrenching—without diving into an abyss of emotional torture in the name of entertainment.
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Closest in terms of precedents to the patiently told crime sagas of David Fincher, with shades of “Se7en” and explicit nods to “Zodiac,” “Prisoners” alternates between two modes: an investigative thriller and a intense tale of crime and punishment.
Operating in the same slate-gray neo-noir space as David Fincher’s Se7en and Zodiac , Prisoners braids a grand tale of sin and possible redemption with a knotty, intelligently plotted investigative thriller.
In a scene reminiscent of David Fincher’s “Se7en,” we get that staple of psycho-killer films: the mummified corpse.
For those folks who though Se7en was too cheery and Zodiac too fast-paced, here comes Prisoners , a sprawling crime drama in the tradition of David Fincher, but minus his level of artistry.
Surely, they’ve seen Peter Lorre in, say, M, Kevin Spacey in Se7en, and whatever it was that Stanley Tucci was doing in The Lovely Bones.
The project might have seemed perfect for David Fincher — except that Fincher had already made two similar films, Se7en and Zodiac.
Closest in terms of precedents to the patiently told crime sagas of David Fincher, with shades of “Se7en” and explicit nods to “Zodiac,” “Prisoners” alternates between two modes: an investigative thriller and a intense tale of crime and punishment.
Operating in the same slate-gray neo-noir space as David Fincher’s Se7en and Zodiac , Prisoners braids a grand tale of sin and possible redemption with a knotty, intelligently plotted investigative thriller.
But in exchanging flair for a grounded, Midwestern sensibility, Villeneuve and screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski are able to summon the kind of existential dread that made David Fincher’s “Zodiac” so effective – a film that “Prisoners” subtly but wisely echoes throughout much of its 150 minute running time.
Along the route, the tone does shift from taut procedural (in the vein of, say, Zodiac) to something a little more melodramatic (think of the breathless Mystic River).
Prisoners is a heavy movie exploring serious themes, similar to the contemporary prestige procedurals Zodiac and Mystic River .
The presence of Jake Gyllenhaal creates unintentional echoes of Zodiac .
In 1997 Atom Egoyan made his masterpiece “The Sweet Hereafter,” one of the best films of the decade.
There are two movies at war here: a glum, wintry character drama from the Atom Egoyan mold (say, The Sweet Hereafter or Exotica) and a very-particular-set-of-skills thriller a la Taken.
Keller has become a modern-day version of Charles Bronson’s Paul Kersey in the “Death Wish” movies or Dustin Hoffman’s David Sumner in Sam Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs.”
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(And without going into too much detail, let's just say that the director of the excellent 1988 Danish thriller The Vanishing should expect a royalty check to hit his mailbox sometime soon.)
Though at first glance the pic would appear to have little in common with his previous work, Villeneuve has long shown an interest in the psychological and emotional consequences of violence, as evidenced by 2009’s serenely chilling, black-and-white “ Polytechnique ” (about a real-life Canadian mass shooting) and especially 2010’s Oscar-nominated “ Incendies ,” which “Prisoners” echoes in its fragmented central mystery and its theme of the good and ill transmitted from parents to children.
From Denis Villenueve, the same director who gave us the equally bleak if more memorable " Incendies ," the darkness honed by world-class cinematographer Roger Deakins surrounds the disappearance of two little girls, with just about every member of an impressive cast being held captive by the stylishly gloomy situation.
(I had exactly the same reaction to his Oscar-nominated “Incendies.” ) Don’t get me wrong, I like trash just fine, and the twisty-loo, triple-abduction plot of “Prisoners” certainly kept me watching to the end.
Directed with sober, solemn earnestness by Denis Villeneuve (“Incendies”), it examines the emotional fallout of a child kidnapping on two families, even as it chronicles the psychological unraveling of the investigating detective.
Written by Aaron Guzikowski and directed by Denis Villeneuve (who directed the Oscar nominated Incendies), this is a poetic, slow boiling mystery tracing just how far someone will go to for the sake of their child, and how much we are all prisoners of our behaviour.
On a purely technical level, and in terms of what he accomplishes with the actors, Villeneuve (a Canadian who was acclaimed for the Oscar-nominated “Incendies”) does a lot of things right.