Prisoners (2013) Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Even way before its releases, this always seemed like a great movie with lots of potential and a great premise and cast involved. So is this movie as good as I and everybody else thought it was going to be? Not exactly but having said that, this still is a pretty solid movie!

The main thing that I thought was slightly disappointing about with this movie was that it wasn't the raw and gritty movie that I expected it to be and was hoping for. Instead of being purely realistic and emotionally hitting it's a movie that too often is going for the clichéd Hollywood solution and approach to things.

It's also a movie that's constantly focusing on the 'where's my daughter' aspects, rather than on the 'I miss my daughter' or what could we have done to prevent this and how could this have happened in the first place. It's glossing over all these aspects and it's a movie that's constantly moving forward and never one that's looking back at things, while this definitely would have been an appropriate thing to do at times and could potentially have made this movie also a more powerful and effective one, with all of its drama and character development. Because of this approach, some of the characters also suddenly disappear out of the story (and no, not just the abducted children), which after a short while turns this movie into one that's just about the Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal characters, while the movie really doesn't start off that way.

But it's weird really. Despite all the, what I would consider to be, flaws and weaknesses of the movie, it never turns into a bad one as well! As a matter of fact, it's a very solid one within its genre. It still features a very engaging story, that has plenty of interesting elements in it. It isn't just another straightforward thriller but also one that goes a bit deeper into things, forcing its audience to think a bit deeper about things themselves as well. It's a movie with certain morals and questions in it, that make you think about things and lets you piece things together in your own mind as well. It certainly leaves things up to your own interpretation, though the movie at times is also trying a bit too hard to wrap everything up needly, by itself.

The characters all go through some pretty interesting transitions and the movie also throws 1 or 2 nice surprises at you. So really, plenty of reasons to go see this movie, even while it really isn't as effective and gritty as I was hoping for.

7/10

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