Prisoners

PrisonersPrisoners

Every moment matters.

20132 h 33 min
Overview

When Keller Dover's daughter and her friend go missing, he takes matters into his own hands as the police pursue multiple leads and the pressure mounts. But just how far will this desperate father go to protect his family?

Metadata
Title Prisoners
Director Denis Villeneuve
Release Date 18 September 2013
Runtime 2 h 33 min
Budget $46,000,000
Details
Movie Media
Movie Status
Movie Rating Excellent
Images
No images were imported for this movie.

My opinion : Thirdly we’ll be exploring a feeling of repression in film. One of the most effective and strongest emotions an audience can feel for in a movie is injustice, the idea that theres nothing that serves as a way of relieving ourselves psychologically and when we are left with nothing but pain and sorrow, this doesn’t necessarily happen every-time the bad guy wins in a movie (ie : The Usual Suspects) but more that, we feel horrible for someone and we expect that in the end theres a sense of hope and the hero finally is happy. Well with the emotion i’m talking about, this does not happen. I’m talking about films such as The Green Mile (arguably the most emotional film to date) or the full third act of Million Dollar Baby which would’ve been a prime example but i’m actually going to talk about the sub plot of the 2013 Denis Villeneuve film Prisoners that speaks volumes in what its trying to say and is about two families who lose their two daughters and with the help of a great investigator, must find them for as quickly as possible.

The sub plot revolves around the morale of Keller Dover who goes out of his way to kidnap a man he believes to be the one behind it all and proceeds to torture him throughout the entirety of the film as he is fully convinced that he is the kidnapper of his children. The few scenes there are of these tortures prove as one of the toughest scenes in my opinion as its been further shown that the man has the mentality of a 9 year old and so in no way could it be him. But Keller continues on, from brutally beating him near death and locking him in the shower and burning the poor boy with boiling hot water for as long as necessary. It truly was sad and unjust to see as it was so obviously not him and in one particular scene when the investigator investigates the building to where the man was locked in, does not find him and so the torture continues on. But the saddest of all, is that in all our minds, we are in a constant battle of morality in if what Keller is doing is actually for the greater good or just plain evil, and so Villeneuve asks us through this dark, violent and inhumane act one of the most important questions  : what would you be prepared to do for the ones you love? Throughout that entire subplot there is not a single drop of a cathartic moment, we don’t even get to see in depth at how they found out about the poor boy who in the end, Keller had done all that for nothing, not only scarring the boy physically, but just as well as the audiences mind, mentally. An underrated masterpiece is this film.