★★☆☆☆

You might want to avoid having a few glasses of wine before watching Prisoners. Perhaps someone who is a parent could get into it more. I did eventually get into it, but, Prisoners doesn’t completely succeed when it comes to exploring just how far parents will go to locate missing children.

Jake Gyllenhaal has been in a few left of fringe brooding type roles lately. I understand an artists need for experimentation, really I do. I’m just not certain the roles work for him.

Hugh Jackman on the other hand has this “mans man” image besides all of the super hero stuff so, if he wants to play a dad out of his mind with grief/fear/rage over a missing child he can do that. It’s not like he needs the money given the success of the X-Men franchise.

This is not a particularly bad movie yet it is also not particularly good. If I had never seen another cop/detective movie or television show I’m sure I would have a much higher opinion. The whole “torture doesn’t work pacifist” turning into a torture driven monster when it comes to their own family has also been done quite a bit. I mean, it’s true. Only the lowest form of coward would not resort to torture when they are up against the clock to save the lives of their family.

What I think really dented my opinion of the movie was the advertising. This isn’t what the commercials lead you to believe. I don’t know if marketing didn’t actually communicate with the producers or someone thought it would be cute to misdirect. Either way, it brought in the wrong audience for the movie, namely me.

If you want a short list of movies I do recommend you can find it here. You might also try this rental list.