Prisoners is a suspense drama of 2 hours and 26 minutes that kept me at the edge of my seat all the way through. Reminiscent of Taken with Liam Neeson, the story is about the worst nightmare a parent can imagine.
When my son was just a year and a half old I remember one day working in the yard, trimming bushes and cleaning up leaves. My son was outside with me playing in the grass with his toys while I puttered around. There was nobody else home and it was my job to watch him. Suddenly I looked up and I didn’t see him. First calm, I walked around the corner of the house, and when I didn’t see him there I ran to the other corner. As panic set in, I looked behind bushes and any other objects where he could be, all the while calling for him. When he didn’t turn up, I raced into the house, looked in all rooms and closets. Nothing. I remember standing in the driveway breathless, realizing that the minutes were ticking away, and with every minute I lost to indecision he would be further out of reach. Should I start running down the street? Should I get in the car? If he was abducted, all was too late already, or was it?
When he finally ambled from behind a hedge as if nothing had happened I experienced the most relief I had ever had in my life. Nothing at all equals the feeling a parent has when he thinks he has lost his child. It’s been 25 years, and I remember the panic like it was yesterday. My heart started pounding just writing it down.
In the movie Prisoners, two families in a Pennsylvania suburb have a nice Thanksgiving afternoon together. They have two girls of about age six who want to walk down the street to the house of one of the girls to get something to bring back. The two girls walk out the door and the rest of the family continues enjoying the afternoon – until one of the parents asks for the girls. They are nowhere. The only clue is a ramshackle RV that was parked a few houses down on the side of the street, and the RV is now gone. In the ensuing manhunt, the police quickly find the RV and an apparently feeble-minded young man, Alex Jones (Paul Dano) driving it. When they arrest and interrogate him they find no evidence, and after a couple of days they let him go.
The survivalist father of one of the girls (Hugh Jackman) does not believe in Alex’s innocence and decides to take matters in his own hands, going directly against the instructions of detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal). And so the drama unfolds.
Prisoners is a long movie that does not seem long, it’s extremely well acted and it kept me captivated and engaged without giving me a break.
Rating: ***
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