Special Exhibit: PRISONERS

Year: 2013

 

Duration: 153 minutes.

 

Where to watch: Hulu, Amazon Prime.

 

For a lot of people it was Blade Runner 2049. For many others before that it was Arrival or Sicario. For me it was definitely Prisoners. In fact, none of the latter, more popular films of Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve has wowed me as much as his 2013 thriller, even though I can appreciate all of them for their many strengths.

But Prisoners counts among my favorite films ever. When it first came out, I watched it no less than three times in quick succession, and on each view I discovered new things to admire. From the perfect photography by Roger Deakins to the brilliant acting of the main stars, I was duly impressed by this seemingly bleak tale of crime and revenge, and its bright core of hope, buried under the grief but always ready to emerge.

This epic starts with the disappearance of two little girls, Anna Dover and Joy Birch. The Dover parents (Hugh Jackman and Maria Bello) and the Birches (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis) immediately report this to the police. Clever Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) soon arrests the main suspect, disturbed youth Alex Jones (Paul Dano).

However, the police decides that Jones’ low intelligence incapacities him to sustain a kidnapping, and the man is released. The sorrow the film sustains up to this point starts to also give way to Jackman’s character’s mighty rage. What can a desperate and resourceful man like him do when he feels that justice can’t give him the answer he looks for?

I already mentioned how amazing I find the central performances, but I have to emphasize how powerful the acting is by the always great Gyllenhaal and Jackman, as well as Dano. The disturbing atmosphere that prevails for most of the film’s considerable runtime is a testament to Villeneuve’s powers as a director, which he had already shown in earlier, less mainstream efforts like the remarkable Incendies (2010) and the terrifying Polytechnic (2009).

Now, Prisoners did well at the box office, as well as critically, but I still consider it somewhat of an underrated masterpiece because I feel like it deserved much more recognition than it got. At the time, there were even some naysayers that considered it way too gloomy.

I bet that if the exact same film had been released after Villeneuve had become the critical darling he is now, Prisoners would have gone to become one of the quintessential films of the decade.

Anyway, in my book, it already is.