Prisoners (Denis Villeneuve, 2013)

[The Narrator Returns]

A trailer for Prisoners, the first American film from Incendies director Denis Villeneuve. It's got a killer cast (poor Paul Dano, he's the only one without a "____ Award Nominee/Winner" credit), and it's shot by Roger Deakins, so this is pretty high on my watchlist already.

[warren oates]

I liked this a lot when I read it as a spec. It was maybe the first American script I've ever read that had the sort of intensity, violence and willingness to go much further than you think it will that made me love New Korean Cinema. In fact, I had hoped one of those directors might end up helming it. This trailer leaves me wandering if it will all play out as well as it might have. I've only seen Villeneuve's Polytechnique, which I found surprisingly forgettable.

[Brian C]

I thought Incendies was fantastic, but this trailer seems lacking to me, also. On the other hand, if it really does have "the sort of intensity, violence and willingness to go much further than you think it will", then it's easy to imagine WB marketing doing whatever they can to avoid having that come across in the trailer.

[FerdinandGriffon]

I've never seen any of his films, but this trailer is much more intriguing to me than Incendies', which I remember only for the sentimentality of the premise (as presented there) and how badly it clashed with the film's setting. This looks much more interesting, for its suburban setting and Deakins' spacious compositions. And it does seem to have a less operatic Sympathy for Lady Vengeance vibe, though that could go either way.

[Jeff]

I know that I shouldn't have liked this nearly as much as I did. It's a goofy potboiler full of unlikely coincidences, red herrings, and implausibilities. It also doesn't seem to quite know what message it's trying to send or how to say it. Damned if it wasn't gripping anyway. There are several fantastic performances here. Jackman and Gyllenhaal are in top form, but I especially liked the lower key work by Terrence Howard and Viola Davis. Denis Villeneuve has really got an eye for interesting shots, and Deakins chilly, bleak cinematography is my favorite so far this year.

[The Narrator Returns]

Seriously, as good as Skyfall looked, this was a more impressive achievement, because Deakins had much less to work with (chilly Pennsylvania suburbs aren't known for being beautiful locations). And that roadway scene near the end, wow.

[Jeff]

chilly Pennsylvania suburbs aren't known for being beautiful locations

I believe it was actually chilly Georgia suburbs subbing for chilly Pennsylvania suburbs, but your point stands.

[domino harvey]

Does Wonder Boys count?

[Brian C]

I realize I'm getting pedantic here, but was Wonder Boys set/filmed in the suburbs? I recall it being a neighborhood of actual Pittsburgh.

Point stands, though, it was a lovely film.

[rs98762001]

It's silly, pompous, exploitative trash that takes itself as seriously as a Pulitzer Prize winner. The performances are one note, the characters thin, and Gyllenhaal's detective, who apparently has solved every case he's ever worked on, is Inspector Clouseau-ish in his bumbling idiocy. It aims for Mystic River yet ends up somewhere beneath Frailty.

[mfunk9786]

Really enjoyed this one, though I wish we would have gotten more insight on the red herring at the end of the 2nd act (and the books taken as evidence). Still, though: Amazing to look at, and operating on a cable TV level of tension, which is an absolute compliment. Great performances, too: I had no idea that Jackman was so good at his job.

[Professor Wagstaff]

"Prisoners" is very evocative of Fincher and does quite a bit of cribbing from the original version of "The Vanishing" , effectively too, and those are levels of craft I wish I could compare more movies to when I go to the theatres. Even with the film's tendency to tip into melodrama, the cast kept things emotionally grounded (I'm not sure any one performer deserves to be singled out, but Jackman earns points for doing some terrific work that's so unlike the disposable pap he typically makes). It seems clear to me that this wasn't shot in Pennsylvania, but unlike some other films using Georgia to sub for another state ("The Iceman" trying to pass off as upstate NJ seemed particularly egregious), I think "Prisoners" captured the damp, colorless canvas of the state at Thanksgiving.

[Brian C]

It's hard for me to get over how just plain lazy the script for this movie is. Why does it have to more or less write Maria Bello's character out of the movie right from the getgo? Why does it have to rely so hard on red herrings? Why doesn't Gyllenhaal's character ever act like an actual cop? Why couldn't the filmmakers come up with a scenario that wouldn't have resulted in the kids being found right away if the cops were even minimally competent? Why do the ultimate villain's motivations have to be so ridiculous? Why can't there be some moral ambiguity to the proceedings here instead of making everyone unambiguously a monster?

This is a movie that seems to have some aspirations to seriousness, but the filmmakers seem content to merely posit as much instead of exploring these issues in any real way. There's a good movie in here somewhere, but it needed a much more thoughtful directorial touch and a screenplay that doesn't feel like a first-time effort from a sheltered high school kid.

[warren oates]

Couldn't disagree more with that assessment of the script. It's a genre piece through and through, but all things considered one of the better specs I've read in years. If this had been a first novel instead, it wouldn't have won a mainstream literary prize, but it would likely be a bestseller on crime lists and be up for an Edgar Award.

Some quick responses to your questions:

--Because the movie isn't really about either one of the moms -- it's about one dad and one cop searching for the kids. And because Maria Bello's character's going catatonic with grief and helplessness only ratchets up the pressure on Jackman's search.
--Because red herrings have always been the generic bread and butter of crime thrillers. And this one has some truly effective doozies.
--More like an actual cop, how?
--Minimally competent to do what exactly that would have found the kids?

Spoiler

Who we know are in the hole, where she said she left them when the cops came around?

--Who's the ultimate villain in your view?

Spoiler

Is it a tag-team effort with Holly Jones and her years-dead husband and their first victim Alex Jones? Or just Holly? How are her motivations any more ridiculous than Buffalo Bill's, Hannibal Lecter's (The Silence of the Lambs), John Doe's (Se7en) or Raymond Lemorne's (The Vanishing)? To its credit, I'd add that Prisoners, unlike even some of these fine genre predecessors, doesn't get unduly caught up in the antagonist's twisted personal mythology, indulgently dwelling on detail and overexplaining motivation, in a way that would seem especially cliche in 2013. I feel like we're given just enough.

--It's a big stretch to say everyone in the film is unambiguously a monster. You'll have to be more specific than that. Though it'd be easier to agree that many of the characters are prisoners of their own need to right real or imagined injustices against the guilty and the sometimes not-so-guilty.

I have a longer post, an appreciation, that's been sitting in my draft file for a week. I've seen the film twice now and for me, in what's already a very good year for movies, Prisoners is easily one of the best Hollywood films of the year, and one of the best crime thrillers in a while. I can see how one would fault the writing if this isn't your cup of tea. But from where I stand the direction -- of the actors and the camera, of the mood and pace of the whole -- could hardly be better. I'd definitely be curious to hear about specific directorial choices that weren't working for you.

[Brian C]

Well, a few quick things:

--Because the movie isn't really about either one of the moms -- it's about one dad and one cop searching for the kids. And because Maria Bello's character's going catatonic with grief and helplessness only ratchets up the pressure on Jackman's search.

This seems too much like a just-so response to satisfy me. Would it have hurt the movie to have Bello's character be a biger part of it? What is it about the choice of focusing on the two men that is inherently meritorious? How does her catatonia ratchet up the pressure on Keller anyway? It's theoretically true, but we're not shown that, and in fact he seems mostly to ignore her completely. Like he ignores everything and everyone else except his gut feeling about Alex.

--Because red herrings have always been the generic bread and butter of crime thrillers. And this one has some truly effective doozies.

Effective how and in what way? They seem like dead ends just for the sake of dead ends to me. I don't find it particularly persuasive to simply assert that it's a genre convention and move on, as if there's no criticism to be made because, hey, genre. If that's all there is to it ... well, that seems lazy to me, like I said.

--Minimally competent to do what exactly that would have found the kids?

Spoiler

Who we know are in the hole, where she said she left them when the cops came around?

Spoiler

I simply can't believe that the kids wouldn't have been found in that hole. Why on earth wouldn't the premises have been searched at the outset? And if they were, how do they overlook the hole? Surely something like that is precisely what they would have been looking for! You don't just show up to a suspect's house, look inside his top dresser drawer, and call it a day! You'd have dogs on the premises. You'd look under the fucking car. Etc. Dano's character was the primary suspect at the time, and with good reason! Don't tell me that digging a hole in the yard is sufficient to throw the cops off the trail. That would be amazing incompetence if it actually happened that way.

--Who's the ultimate villain in your view?

Spoiler

Is it a tag-team effort with Holly Jones and her years-dead husband and their first victim Alex Jones? Or just Holly? How are her motivations any more ridiculous than Buffalo Bill's, Hannibal Lecter's (The Silence of the Lambs), John Doe's (Se7en) or Raymond Lemorne's (The Vanishing)? To its credit, I'd add that Prisoners, unlike even some of these fine genre predecessors, doesn't get unduly caught up in the antagonist's twisted personal mythology, indulgently dwelling on detail and overexplaining motivation, in a way that would seem especially cliche in 2013. I feel like we're given just enough.

Aren't all those other movies pretty ridiculous also (I've actually only seen Silence)?

Spoiler

I'll grant that Holly isn't as ridiculous as Hannibal Lecter but that's a low bar to set!

It's not like The Silence of the Lambs doesn't have its merits, but can we talk? It's a cartoon.

[knives]

What's wrong with being a cartoon?

[Brian C]

Nothing really. Like I said, The Silence of the Lambs has it's merits. But it and Prisoners are very different movies!

[warren oates]

I'd still be curious to hear some more detailed critiques of how the film's direction -- which is what truly elevates the material for me and made me want to see it more than once -- was lacking.

And I'll have to ask just what kind of movie you think Prisoners was trying and failing to be?

So back to the film's writing, since that's what you're mostly talking about. If Silence of the Lambs is a cartoon* to you rather than a paragon of the pulpy popular crime thriller genre that Prisoners is squarely aiming at and you've never seen or wanted to see Se7en or the original version of The Vanishing, then I can guess at what's very likely the problem right there. You don't seem to like this genre much to begin with and you were hoping to see something that wasn't really a genre piece at all, yes? Because my point was exactly this -- that ridiculous motivations from the baddies in these kinds of stories are a feature of the genre, not a bug or a sign of weak writing. It's more about how the details and revelations of each over-the-top motivational backstory are worked by the novelist or screenwriter.

As an aside, and though we're not really talking about how true crime influences the genre, I'll add that if you want to go there, you'll find a whole lot of real life baddies with equally outrageous motives. After all, to most of us, what would be a satisfying, plausible, relatable reason for snatching somebody else's kid off the street and chaining them up in your basement? Did Ariel Castro have one?

Red herrings are another feature of the genre since Poe wrote the first dark detective stories. And you're right that I should have said more about how the ones in Prisoners work so well. So here goes:

Spoiler

Everything that seems like a red herring actually isn't. It all ends up tying back into the case in a way you can never anticipate. The pedophile priest's secret murder victim. The creepy stalker (and former Jones' family kidnap escapee) with the police sketchy face. The way that Alex himself both seems to have done it and seems incapable of pulling it off. The reasons for Alex's own constant, quaking fear (have you seen those Elizabeth Smart interviews on CNN? She was a smart, self-possessed young woman when she was taken, and still dared not flee because of threats of death against her and her family. Imagine how scared she would have been with an IQ of about 80.) Because this film has dual protagonists (once again, something somewhat unique to genre pieces like this and difficult to pull off generally for which Prisoners deserves more credit), there are red herrings that play only to Jackman or only to Gyllenhaal. There are a series of clues that look to Gyllenhall like Jackman might be hiding something. Yet he's also passed the lie detector tests and seems genuinely distraught. A large part of the fun for the audience is watching interactions between the two of them fully aware of the dramatic irony at play.

Why don't the cops

Spoiler

tear apart Alex Jones' house from the get go? Because they 1) locate the camper quickly and have no reason to believe he's been home in the meantime; 2) don't believe he has the mental capacity to pull off a double abduction; 3) can find no evidence, physical or otherwise, that the girls ever got into the RV; 4) have to let him go because they don't have enough to arrest him; 5) don't suspect Holly of anything at all. It might be arguable that, had the cops believed at that point that he was a suspect there may have been probable cause to search their house, but probably not tear it apart or start digging up the yard.

*Compared to what exactly? Scenes From A Marriage? The Wire? Sure, but that's not really saying anything at all. As serious psychological chamber drama and reportorial crime procedural aren't even close to what Silence or Prisoners are trying to do.

[rs98762001]

Any comparison with Silence of the Lambs and its taut, poetic economy goes out of the window when the Prisoners villain

Spoiler

gives what felt like a 5-minute expository speech outlining everything that she and her husband did, and why they did it.

As warrenoates said, it's simply poor, lazy writing... just as it was

Spoiler

when Gylenhaal knocks over a bunch of photographs and happens to find something incriminating...

-just as it was half a dozen other times in the film. And don't get me started on the lame cop-out ending.

I wouldn't have minded all this nonsense had it been directed in an unpretentious, pulpy way. But the guy really seems to think he's making something with the complexity of Highsmith or Simenon rather than something a step above a Law and Order episode.

[warren oates]

Cause it's more taut and poetically economical to have one serial killer (who just happens to be a mad genius psychiatrist) speechify about the other one's motivation (who just happens to have been a former patient). Buffalo Bill/Jame Gumb himself admitting it would not only be more boring (true that), it'd be downright unrealistic.

Wait, what? When did I say the writing was lazy? How is the ending a cop-out? And, btw, Simenon isn't actually a bad point of comparison, really. One thing his so-called hard novels certainly have in common with Prisoners is the often slow and inevitable self-sullying of the major characters.

[rs98762001]

Whoops, I meant Brian C!

[rohming]

People whose opinions I respect seem pretty split over this movie, half praising it, half lambasting it. It makes me very curious to see it for myself (though I was not a big fan of Incendies).

[Sonmi451]

If you didn't like Incendies because you thought it was too messy, or overlong, or too convoluted, or too contrived, then you certainly won't like Prisoners. While it is rather taut and well-acted, it pretty much takes all of the weaknesses of Incendies (which I was slightly ambivalent about), and magnifies them.