Prisoners is a disturbing film that raises disturbing questions. It is almost a throwback to the 1970's, a time when events seemed to be spiraling out of our control and our movies reflected a reflexive anger against the powerlessness that we felt. We saw it with such films as Dirty Harry, Death Wish, Taxi Driver, The Warriors, and Straw Dogs. All of these movies are meditations, in their own way, reactions to the increasingly hostile society and our feeling of no protection from it, where the rights of criminals and anarchy reigned over the rights of the victim and law and order. People saw an increasingly impotent police hamstrung by laws and lawyers who they felt they had no concern for the safety and well-being of society. These movies posited the only thing one could do was lash back at that decay despite the law. The punks versus the non-punks locked in a steel cage match with each other because the law and police would not protect us. Whether or not this is an accurate assessment I won't get into here, because this isn't a political blog like Bill O'Reilly or Ariana Huffington. But art should, and often does, reflect feelings and frustrations of the public, especially art driven for mass consumption. And is it any wonder that in a day and society that can produce real-life horrors like Columbine, Sandy Hook or even the Batman theater shootings, that we should see echoes of that horror and disbelief in popular entertainment? From TV shows as diverse as American Horror Story and Sons of Anarchy, to movies like Hostel, Saw and White Elephant, psychos are in and here to stay. The question is, what does one do about it? Prisoners reflects that anxiety.
Prisoners starts out where two very close families are having Thanksgiving together. When the two youngest daughters are abducted when they go out to play, the two families are obviously thrown into a panic. After a brief search, a probable suspect is found who is slightly developmentally challenged. He briefly tries to run from the police in an RV, but crashes into a tree. A lot of circumstantial evidence points to him as the culprit. He is thoroughly questioned by the police and his RV is searched, but because he won't talk and there is no evidence to hold him in custody, he has to be released. When he is released, one of the girls' fathers, Keller Dover, played intensely by Hugh Jackman, is convinced the man did it and kidnaps him. With the reluctant help from the other father, Fraklin Birch, played by Terrence Howard, they torture this man ruthlessly to get him to talk. He does not crack, but says cryptic things that may or may not have some meaning to the girls' whereabouts. As the movie continues, and the police search progresses, the torture gets more intense. As they torture him, it seems the man Keller and Franklin took may be innocent. Or maybe not.
What is interesting in this film is the question, just how far are you willing to go when you are not totally convinced you're right, but you just might be? Each character who participates in the torture goes to their preconceived limit of acceptability, all of which are different, but they don't stop it. Keller is obsessed and totally convinced, but doesn't want to do what he is doing. Franklin has moral qualms about it, but he does not have the fortitude to stand up to Keller to get him to stop. The crucial point is that Franklin is not weak, but does have serious reservations to what is happening. The really interesting point happens when Franklin tells his wife Nancy, played by Viola Davis, about it, and after a brief outburst from the man they're holding, she goes along with it as long as Keller will not kill the man. All layers of gray, but all asking the same question, do you trade your morality and soul for an outcome you desperately want resolved but you may not be 100% it will work. This is obviously been a question facing our society since the allegations of torture came out of Iraq and elsewhere. This same question was posed in the film Zero Dark Thirty, with a similar ambiguity by the filmmaker, where they leave the answer up to you, the viewer. Neither film really takes sides, just posits the question and lets you decide for yourself.
The movie is superlative, but not perfect. There are two reasons I deducted a half star, but neither have to do with performance. They both have to do with the story. The first is that it wraps up a little too neatly and ends abruptly, but is satisfying. This is intended for mass audiences, after all, so there can't be too much to chew on at the end. We like our stories to end, and being Americans, end fairly well. The second is that there is a crucial bit of evidence found that really is too neat and found for no logical reason other than they needed something to set up a boogeyman at the end. It just abruptly appears in the middle. There is no reason the detective, played bombastically by Jake Gyllenhaal, to find it, but we needed it so we could tie all things neatly at the end. It reminds me a little of how they caught on to John Doe in Se7en by tracking his library card. It stretches reality a little too much and is in there because the script painted itself into a corner. But otherwise, the movie is taut and suspenseful, and I enjoyed it a lot.
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