Prisoners (2013)

User Review

• 

  BarneyNuttall

  9 / 10

  Denis Villeneuve proves himself to be a master of his craft with every film he makes. He's a director who takes a screenplay, pushes it further and then pushes it again making for some the most emotionally charged cinema in the 21st century.
  
  The title of the film only proves this. While the girls are literal prisoners to their captors, each character is a prisoner in their own way. Keller is a prisoner to the future, constantly afraid of what will happen if he doesn't 'pray for the best, prepare for the worst.' Meanwhile, Detective Loki is imprisoned in his past, something that the audience only gets brief glimpses of through sparse dialogue hints and Gyllenhaal's unstable performance.
  
  The film's third act develops the motif of the maze. We even see a crazed lunatic obsessively drawing a maze, stating that it's a map. This only infuriates Loki, hinting at the meaning of this. I personally think the maze symbolises the maze of morality. Each character we follow has conflicting morals: Keller is desperate to find his daughter but ruthlessly tortures Alex in the process; Loki obeys the law in his investigation but could be doing more in his pursuit of the Dover's daughter; the Birches see what Keller has done and choose to keep it secret. No one is a straight line of morality in this film but instead a labyrinth of secrets and moral conundrums.
  
  The performances are all stellar in this film, brimming with grief and anger. Watching it for a second time, the overwhelming sense of loss and grief, accentuated by the wintery Commonwealth, was undeniable. Prisoners tells of a crime in which everyone becomes a prisoner to its consequences, creating a maze of morality in which our heroes must tread carefully for fear of succumbing to evil.

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