Prisoners

There’s a woman in Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners” who lost her son 26 years prior to this film’s events. She shows Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) the one tape she watches of her missing son each morning and dejectedly declares, “No one took him. Nothing happened. He’s just gone.”

Detective thrillers and crime procedurals have conditioned us into always expecting an answer and motivation behind the terrible things that happen in the world. We’re left unsatisfied when we don’t get the answer we were looking for, if the puzzle pieces don’t paint a complete portrait or if the ending isn’t nice and tidy.

Rarely in life is this ever the case, and like David Fincher’s cryptic “Zodiac,” “Prisoners” attains intense thrills and gravitas through scattered clues that seem to be everywhere and answers that are nowhere. It’s a studio film that minimizes on the action set pieces, the family melodrama and the pretentious psychology to show that evil is not only omnipresent, but it’s the real mystery.

The two young daughters of the Dover family and the Birch family go missing much like that first boy 26 years earlier; they just disappear. On Thanksgiving Day the two girls go across the street, we get a close-up of a barren tree outside their suburban home, and they’re gone.

Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) suspects the timid loner Alex Jones (Paul Dano) swiped his daughter. With flat, stringy hair, thick glasses belonging to another decade and a junker RV, he certainly fits the description, but when Detective Loki is brought in to interrogate, Alex is clean and seems incapable of anything so sinister. When Alex is let go without charge, Keller intervenes and abducts Alex himself, demanding the answer he knows must be there.  

Keller’s aggression and torture may appear farfetched, but Jackman’s gruff seriousness skillfully suggests a sense of evil that can grow out of nowhere in a person or act. Keller pummels Alex mercilessly and seems to gain no satisfaction or answers in the process. He’s getting closer to nothing, and as Keller’s compassion seems to completely evaporate over the days since his daughter’s disappearance, so too does the nuance that he’s doing the right thing.

And yet that story thread alone would send “Prisoners” into exploitation film territory. The real catalyst of the story is Loki, who slowly but surely picks up on the mystery’s stray breadcrumbs, despite never coming up with any catharsis or answers. We meet him in an empty Chinese restaurant on Thanksgiving night and never learn a thing about his home life. He too embodies the ruthless form of preparedness that Keller talks about in an early scene, but his apathetic, by the book sensibilities are naturally at odds with Keller’s fiery brutality.

Gyllenhaal is excellent in the role, blinking with uncontrollable uncertainty as though trying to suppress the rage that he’s coming up empty. After coming across a decrepit body locked away in a cellar with general disappointment, we suspect he’s faced such frustrations and devious loose ends many times before.

The nuance of Aaron Guzikowski’s (“Contraband”) screenplay is that although it piles on answers in its remaining 20 minutes, none provide the clear understanding that would paint these despicable acts in simple black or white. The person ultimately responsible for the crimes recites, “Making kids disappear is the war we wage with God,” a line that speaks not to any psychosexual compulsion but an invocation of omnipotent forces. Villeneuve suggests that God is not in control of all the evil in the world, and the clarity and answers (or the children in a literal sense) are not always to be found.

Legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins finds that overwhelming darkness in this quaint suburban town. Aerial shots of Keller’s torture chamber can only be perceived as looking down on these actions. Full-bodied shots with the camera positioned low in a dank cellar show Loki walking among the empty void. And the gray, foggy and torrentially rainy neighborhood compliment Villeneuve’s solemn and understated thrill ride.

“Prisoners” is not for the squeamish. Its ending is as tense as anything all year, but it floors you because we don’t get a clear-cut understanding of evil, just an expertly wrapped-up conclusion with the earth-shattering realization of its presence.

4 stars