The girls were last seen by their older siblings playing by an RV parked down the street from their houses. Loki successfully tracks down the RV, and when its driver, the mentally challenged Alex (Paul Dano), crashes his vehicle in a foolish attempt to flee, it looks like Loki has his man. However, the forensic analysts find no traces of the girls' presence in the RV, and there is no other evidence to tie Alex to the kidnapping. So, after the maximum forty-eight hour hold which is permitted by law in those instances when the detained suspect is not charged, the cops release Alex with instructions not to leave the Commonwealth. This does not sit well with Keller, who apparently has never seen detective shows on TV, where the forty-eight hour rule is a staple. But Keller has, instead, become familiar with the vigilante tactics employed in old Charles Bronson movies, e.g., 1974's Death Wish.
Keller confronts Alex outside the courthouse and, as the two of them are tangling, is the only one who hears Alex mutter a sentence which seemingly implicates Alex in the girls' kidnapping. Keller is not going to let some flimsy legal technicalities get in the way of finding his daughter and her friend, so the next day he decides to beat the information out of Alex. A too-large portion of the story pertains to the extreme methods used by Keller in this endeavor, and the eventual reluctant involvement of Joys' parents, Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis, two actors who have been getting a lot of work lately).
Meanwhile, Loki continues with the investigation, unaware of what Keller is up to vis-a-vis Alex. Loki does not believe Alex has the mental capacity to pull off a perfect crime; someone else has to be the perpetrator. He interviews Alex's grandmother, Holly (Melissa Leo), who raised Alex and allows him to live in his RV which he parks on her property. Later, Loki pays a visit to a drunken priest who unwittingly provides an important clue which comes into play in the last act. Loki is also on the trail of a mysterious young man whom he first encounters from a distance at a candlelight vigil which the townsfolk are holding for the missing girls. Things get really weird when Keller's wife, Grace (Maria Bello), reports that someone has snuck into her house and escaped through Anna's bedroom window. Once Loki finds out Alex is also missing, things start to congeal, although there are still many twists and turns yet to come.
There are so many crime procedural shows on
television that a movie script in that genre needs to be extraordinary
to make it worth the price of admission. After all, the TV shows are
free. Although Prisoners has won many accolades from the
critics, there are too many nits, i.e., minor objections, for me to
classify the script as extraordinary. When Character A opts to drive to
Character B's house to deliver a message which could much more easily
have been communicated via phone, especially when Character A is on his cell phone all the time, that is what's commonly referred to as
a "contrivance." In other words, the script writers need the two
characters to be face to face in order to pull off something else
(besides a conversation) which could not occur if Character A had simply
opted for the phone call. This sort of contrivance is heavily relied
upon in this movie's denouement. A second nit occurs when Loki bangs on
the front door of a "person of interest." If you were that person,
would you answer the door and put on your most innocent face, or would you
ignore the knocking and go ahead with the perpetration of your evil
intention just a few feet away inside the house? I also had a hard time
buying into the involvement of Joy's parents, especially the mom, in
the vigilante criminalities of Keller. There are a few other nits
(e.g., Keller deciding to park his car in an adjacent liquor store lot
instead of his usual parking spot in front of an abandoned apartment
building), but you get the point.
My original intention was to give a B- to Prisoners.
That is my grade for movies which are not bad but did not live up to
my expectations. That evaluation, however, certainly does not pertain
to the acting here. Jackman's portrayal of a heartbroken father seething
beneath the surface, and often beyond, is brilliant. Gyllenhaal as the
cool but sometimes exasperated young Detective Loki is a perfect
counterbalance to Jackman's Keller. Gyllenhaal's Loki is how I picture
Virgil Flowers, a young shrewd detective who is the star of several
thrillers penned by Minnesota author John Sanford. All of the supporting
players make valuable contributions as well. In summary, the acting
was better than the storytelling. So, why did I raise my original grade
a notch to a B? The final sixty seconds are very cool.
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