Review of Prisoners (2013) by John P — 06 May 2014

God damn is Hugh Jackman one scary son of a bitch! For almost a year now friends have been telling me that I needed to see this and it is very realistic and all that other stuff. So I decided one weekend, "What the hell" and rent the movie only to finish it off and say to myself "WHAT THE HELL?" From I hear this is something that people say that it is one of the best movies of 2013. It's one of those movies that did really well at the Toronto International Film Festival so I can say that there are some I get what they're talking about and some things that I can't. This is a pretty dark film and a really cool mystery, so let me dive right on in this movie.

The movie brings a lot of things to the table with one of which being is this right or wrong when you do what you have to do in order to find your children? Like the degree to which they lose all sense of their sensibility to become this crazy person who morality becomes neither here nor there and the only thing that matters is them and their own shit. Hugh Jackman gives, without a doubt, one of the best performances that I have ever seen in his entire career. He delivers a mixture of seriousness and animosity that makes you believe that there are people like this that do exist out there in the real world. I mean if you put his character in a room with the Hugh Jackman version of Wolverine, there's no doubt that he'll beat the ever loving shit out of the mutant. I'm going to tell you something else, if you want someone to play nervous in your movies then get Terrance Howard. This guy plays nervous like nobody else. I loved Jake Gyllenhaal in here as well as plays this stressed out detective who is constantly frustrated whenever he can't solve a clue or when the parents are his back about the case. Everyone else in here from Paul Dano to Maria Bello, and even Melissa Leo were spectacular in this movie and not a single role felt like it was wasted. One complaint I had with this is that this movie is two and a half hours and there are scenes in here that just drags on for so long that they could've easily taken it out. The whole middle act has this whole morality play that is not really going anywhere about Hugh Jackman having this guy tied up certain that he is the one who did it and you're like "Okay maybe we should have something else happening in the plot that moves the story along. It could lose some people when they watch this, but it didn't lose me. Overall I enjoyed the hell out of this movie and if you have a lot of time to kill then I recommend this. This is, without a doubt, a solid four stars all the way.