It starts off with a deer getting shot in a chilly winter wood to a recitation of The Lord's Prayer, and then proceeds to find progressively darker levels of utter bleakness as this familiar but very well-made tale unfolds. Prisoners is on the surface an odd mix of almost forensically-clinical raw emotion in the style of Atom Egoyan and some tepid torture-porn for the arthouse crowd, but the extended running time enables the stark end-of-year visuals (courtesy of Roger Deakins) and the very deliberate pacing to grip the viewer and for the uniformly high-quality performances to breathe - indeed, for Jackman and Gyllenhaal, this may prove to be some of their finest character work. The only major flaw is that Gyllenhaal's detective with an outstanding record fails to connect the most two obvious clues that could not be more foregrounded, but overall this is a supremely effective kidnap/thriller and marks Villeneuve as a director to watch.
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