OVP: Prisoners (2013)

Film: Prisoners (2013)
Stars: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo, Paul Dano
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It's hard not to judge a book by its cover, and in a way that's true for a movie.  A movie has a more complicated cover-it's sometimes the trailer, it's sometimes the real-life inspiration, but most of the time, it starts with the cast and director of a film.

In the case of Prisoners, for me, it could not have had a more interesting or less intriguing cover, somehow simultaneously.  On the one hand, you'd be hard-pressed to find a fall film with three actresses I love more at the moment than Viola Davis, Melissa Leo, and Maria Bello-each has given at least one Oscar-worthy performance in the past decade, and are consistently fascinating screen performers.  Denis Villeneuve, the film's director, recently picked up an OVP award from me for his complicated Incendies.  And Jake Gyllenhaal makes most everything better, particularly when he's playing a detective (Zodiac is one of the best films of the past decade, and a must-see if you haven't already).

This would normally be enough for me, but the men in this film gave me a collective yawn (with the exception of Jake).  Hugh Jackman, Terrence Howard, and Paul Dano have all had their moments before (well, Howard and Dano have), but I've grown to find them all extremely hammy since those moments, and each routinely takes the opportunity to serve their performance with a side of ham.  So I went into this movie somewhat optimistic (the reviews have been kind), but with a tense stomach.

(Spoilers Ahead)...and that's how I left.  The film unfolds in an even-keeled fashion-you get to know where it's headed quickly, and because it's a big screen adventure and not an episode of SVU, you know that it's coming with a solidly happy ending.  The movie unfolds swiftly-we meet two couples and their similarly aged children (Jackman & Bello, Davis & Howard), and thanks to tell-it-all trailers, we know their little girls will be taken (though, in the trailer-maker's defense, that was evident the second the movie started rolling).

The characters take wildly sharp turns after the kidnapping.  Howard and Davis, despite their daughter missing, get shoved to the background of the film-they are in mourning, but not doing anything that grieving parents wouldn't do.  Maria Bello's wife, who was so strong in the movie's opening scenes, becomes bedridden and lives off of a combination of sleep and medication.

Then there's he-man alpha male Hugh Jackman, who is trying very hard to show that he's not a musical actor (they even make a joke about his singing abilities early in the film).  Jackman's character (named Keller Dover, which is a name someone could TOTALLY have in real life) starts the film already on the edge-his sense of paranoia is sharp, and he stores shelves upon shelves of emergency supplies in his basement for some coming doom.  He's a loose cannon who just had his keg lit.

Jackman gets it through his head that one man in particular, Alex Jones (Paul Dano, who has gotten far too twitchy and overact-y since his strong turn in There Will Be Blood), and decides to take the law into his own hands when the police are forced to release Alex due to a lack of evidence.

My problems with these scenes were not that what Jackman was doing-torturing a man he has scant evidence was involved in his daughter's disappearance-was wrong, it's that it was obviously wrong the second he started doing it.  I would have to go back and look and see if Keller really heard the whispered, veiled message that spurred his taking of Alex, but it doesn't matter.   The film is trying to take a poke at recent hit films like Taken, where the love of a father justifies him killing dozens of potentially innocent people to get her back.  But to any sane human being, not killing innocent people is totally obvious.

The film takes a jut from "really?" to bad when they try to have their cake and eat it too with Keller-they want to make you think "edgy" and "how far will he go?" but they don't have the guts to have him not gain any knowledge from the torture (I wasn't kidding about the spoiler alerts, so look out).  He finally gets a comment about a "maze" which leads to him, eventually, learning that Melissa Leo's "aunt" to Alex is the real diabolical genius and kidnapper, and Alex was just a pawn.  By having the torture lead to something fruitful, the director seems intent on justifying what had just happened, and making everyone in the audience who thought "that's what I would do if I were in Keller's shoes" feel appeased.  The film would have been far edgier if they had left it with David Dastmalchian's enigmatic and haunted man as the killer-having Keller truly have to deal with the fact that he held an innocent man in captivity and tortured him to the brink of his life without any purpose or justification-that's an interesting movie.  But instead, we are given yet another cake-and-eat-it-to situation.

The problem with this, and why I cannot write this film off entirely, is that there are other strong elements at work here aside from Jackman's unfortunate plot and overcooked performance.  I adored, for example, what Jake Gyllenhaal was doing here with his complicated detective.  Gyllenhaal's Detective Loki (always a good sign when you don't have to look up a character's name after the first viewing) moves through the film, haunted and broken.  You learn just enough about him for him to remain interesting-he's what I was hoping Daniel Craig's character in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo would have been-a phantom, someone of a strong moral compass who also has seen a bit too much of the world.  Gyllenhaal has had some wandering since he gave us all the epic lovelorn cowboy in Brokeback Mountain and followed it up with a nerdy, eccentric detective in Zodiac, but this is the same actor we fell in love with a few years back, who promised to take the art house circuit by storm.  Detective Loki is operating on a better movie than Prisoners, and hopefully someone will soon give Gyllenhaal just that.

The film also has other things worth noting, though Gyllenhaal is the greatest stand-out.  My love of Melissa Leo knows no end, and I have been dying for her to play a villain.  She also grabs her big moments toward the end of the movie-I love the way she spits out her reason for kidnapping children-you get shivers knowing the way she blurts it out, a speech she's likely given before many times in her head.  The surprise never really happens (you know it's her for most of the movie), but she doesn't pitch to the rafters and she keeps just the right sense of calm-had it not been for Detective Loki, you know she had the cunning to get away with the crime (I hate when movies suddenly make the villain an idiot so that they can get caught).  Leo, as the film's big reveal, has the best chance at awards love, though obviously you have to see the full movie to get the depth of what she's doing.

Eleven paragraphs seems about right for such a film, so I'll leave it at that, though the Comments section is there if you want to discuss Viola Davis or Dylan Minnette (Lost alert!) or Roger Deakins' cinematography.  What were your thoughts on the film?  Do you think it will play into the awards season?  Did you also notice the necklace on the corpse super early on and wonder why no one else put that together?  Share in the comments!