Prisoners (2013) Prisoners (2013)

See also: _Index | Plot Structure (Prisoners) | Backbeats (Prisoners)

Quick Facts

• Director: Denis Villeneuve
• Screenplay: Aaron Guzikowski
• Starring: Hugh Jackman (Keller Dover), Jake Gyllenhaal (Detective Loki), Viola Davis (Nancy Birch), Maria Bello (Grace Dover), Terrence Howard (Franklin Birch), Paul Dano (Alex Jones), Melissa Leo (Holly Jones), Dylan Minnette (Ralph Dover), Zoë Soul (Eliza Birch), Erin Gerasimovich (Anna Dover), Kyla Drew (Joy Birch)
• Cinematography: Roger Deakins
• Editor: Joel Cox, Gary D. Roach
• Music: Jóhann Jóhannsson
• Runtime: 153 minutes
• Release Date: September 20, 2013 (US)
• MPAA Rating: R
• Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures

Overview

On a rainy Pennsylvania Thanksgiving, two young girls vanish from a quiet suburban street, and the rest of the film tracks two parallel attempts to find them: Detective Loki working the case by the book — interviewing, surveilling, building probable cause — and Keller Dover, the missing girl's father, abducting the man he believes responsible and beating answers out of him for days in a sealed-up rental house. Villeneuve runs the procedural and the abduction in counterpoint, and the maze the killer leaves on his victims becomes the film's literal and figurative center: every adult in the story is locked inside one. The closing shot — Loki alone on a darkened lawn, hearing a thin metal whistle from a hole in the ground — refuses the clean rescue and leaves the film's moral ledger open.