Prisoners is a surprisingly strong film. 'Surprisingly', because, from the outset, it didn't look to have much going for it. I expected a rote, straight-to-DVD story – something enjoyable enough, but that was hampered by Hugh Jackman's perfect beard and wavering American accent. Instead, it is exactly those things, but made pretty damn sublime by the incredible eye of cinematographer Roger Deakins, who expertly mines the film's pallid suburban neighbourhoods for all their oppressive normalcy, and finds such earthy, elemental qualities in scenes shot inside mere campervans and muted office spaces. And there's flashes of something else, too – something edgier and meaner in Jackman that I'd not seen before. His cartoonish physicality here is hulking and brimming with a genuine menace.
I'd really wondered what Jake Gyllenhaal would bring to his role. I've seen great potential in him go to waste on bad movies. But here, he's all backstory, which starts him on strong footing. He has a facial tic, which in many other actors' eyes would play as affected, but he makes it part of the language of his character. He hunches and shuffles around with the heavy air of a funeral, which is such a wonderful inversion for the character of a cop – and a Gyllenhaal hero cop, at that – in a film like this. There is atmosphere, and elegance to every frame of Prisoners. It isn't amazing, but it is strong, memorable and gorgeous.
