A powerful violent film.

'Prisoners'. A film starring Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhall, and Viola Davis. Directed by Denis Villeneuve.



      No sunlight pierces through the slate grey skies around a Pennsylvania town. Huge evergreen and leafless trees hover around it. It's late November at Thanksgiving.
     "Be ready," Keller (Hugh Jackman)  tells his son as he aims his rifle to shoot a deer. So from first to last, 'Prisoners' is bathed in violence. Two couples namely Keller and his wife Grace (Mario Bello), and their neighbours, Franklin (Terence Howard) and Nancy (Viola Davis) lose their daughters to a kidnapper.
     Then comes the search for the daughter. Enter Detective Loki played by Jake Gyllenhall who searches tirelessly for the missing children. Keller tries a different route. He zeroes in on and tortures Alex(Paul Dano), a mentally challenged man whom he believes is the abductor.
    Clad in nearly all black clothing, and a tieless buttoned up white shirt, Gyllenhall, with his thick,swept back hair, plays Detective Loki to perfection. Denis Villeneuve, a transplanted Quebecker, has used his first stint in Hollywood to direct a powerful violent film.
     But in the end 'Prisoners' which stretches out over more than two and a half hours, serves up a fantasy. Most detectives would never measure up to Loki and I wouldn't expect them to. Most serial killers and child abductors are men not women. And unfortunately, abducted children vanish forever or don't survive. Still, this is a powerful film.
     "Violence," the black militant H. Rap Brown said many years ago, "is as American as cherry pie." True or not, 'Prisoners' serves up this idea very well. I enjoyed it, and it'll be interesting to see what film Denis Villeneuve directs next.