The One You Gonna Rot In

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As a dark mirror of recent dark times I think Prisoners is pretty ace, and without pushing its agenda that hard even - there's certainly an opinion piece or two to be carved from its explorations of an unilateral force lashing out on unsubstantiated grounds (I half expected to see Paul Dano standing on a box in a hood at some point, but they got there without having to go there) - but it's also just a slow-burn thriller slash procedural filled with some very fine acting too. 

Color me as surprised as you but Hugh Jackman's my best in show, probably for that scene with the children's clothes alone; that's gonna be a highlight on his end-of-career clip-reel for sure. Meanwhile Jake's good... but there were about twenty too many twitches going on. I wish he wouldn't try so darn hard sometimes; he has those amazing expressive eyes, they do plenty all on their lonesome - I want to believe those eyes. When they're amped up to eleven with all the jittering he's just getting in his own way. 

And the film itself, it has probably a little bit much of itself going on too - not to spoil anything but I really disliked a certain someone's casting, it was like a giant blinking red light for me, and I just didn't buy the turn it takes there in a film that had been fairly naturalistic until then. Anyway as a stare-down of impossible animalistic impulses and grief, as a mood piece, it's all solid, but once it starts clacking gears into place trying to resolve things I found myself less interested (and director Villeneuve seemed less interested too). 

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