Prisoners!!!!

Prisoners.

A film that took me by surprise this year is Prisoners mainly for the fact it was certainly under the radar and not particularly hyped up by any film or online websites. It certainly is a film that has everything you want from the style of abduction and search film that this is and it has everything and more to keep you hooked. 

Set in the state of Pennsylvania the film sets the scene in a quiet suburbia where two family's are enjoying each others company with two little girls running around outside with their siblings. As the two girls decide to go back home to look for a whistle they set off on their own and soon enough you don't see them again. 

As the film moves along you see the two fathers Keller (Hugh Jackman) and Franklin (Terrence Howard) frantically search for their daughters. A young mentally challenged drifter Alex (Paul Dano) is arrested in his mobile home which was spotted on the street the girls were playing on, searched and forensically checked his mobile home comes out clean and he is released with no charge. Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) is soon put on the case, a detective that has solved every single case that he's been given. Soon enough Keller see's that Loki isn't doing enough and decides to take actions into his own hands. 

With a storyline that twists and turns it keeps you hooked all the way through the film which I was surprised at. Covering all the characters back story's we see the very American Keller who is a hard working joiner and hunter who stockpiles food for emergency's he's a true hearted American. Franklin is a more reserved straight down the line family man who rarely strays from the path of good. Alex is a loner, mentally challenged young man who is just in the wrong place at the wrong time, he is a victim of circumstance. 

Jackman is intense and at times really scary as he comes across as a desperate man who will do anything to get his little girl back. He is a strange character as you side with him at first then you turn on him and then you side with him again it's very back and forth with him. Dano plays the vulnerable Alex well even though he doesn't have many lines he physically shows the lost character.

For a film that I wasn't too sure of to start with I have to say I was hooked and drawn in, I sided with characters throughout the film, I wished things to happen to characters and I still didn't figure out the ending. It takes a good strong twisting and turning story for me to not work out the ending of the film but it got me I couldn't work it out. A really impressive film that is really dark at times and shows the lengths people will go to to find their kidnapped loved ones. 

9/10.