Prisoners Reviews
Top CriticPrisoners is weary after ten minutes, and I suppose it has persuaded itself that its length is justified by its solemn gaze into the abyss.
In less talented hands, the story could lapse into the maudlin. But Villeneuve, director of the Oscar-nominated Incendies, seems to know just how far to go; only one moment feels less than authentic, but it would be a spoiler to mention it.
It's got lofty aspirations but it also wants to wallow in the muck - to thrill you and sicken you in equal measure while also being About Something.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Ethical exploration or exploitation? In the end, I come down reservedly on the former side: the work done here by Jackman, Gyllenhaal, and especially Villeneuve is simply too powerful to ignore.
Prisoners is unforgettably relentless in asking moviegoers if Keller has gone too far. And, by extension, asking us how far we would go.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
A film that, for all its pretensions and intermittent power, is essentially high-grade claptrap.
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| Original Score: B-
Prisoners has got more pedigree than a Westminster dog-show winner. It's just not very good. In fact, it's worse than not-very-good; it's could've-been-really-good-and-isn't.
The film you begin watching when the lights dim is not the same one you carry home from the theatre.
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| Original Score: 3/4
After two hours of relentless tension, Prisoners starts revealing its secrets to progressively hokier effect.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Is it the best Hollywood mystery we've seen in awhile? Oh yes. Is it one any parent would want to see? Only if they don't mind nightmares.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
In addition to the skin-crawling camera moves and the understated dread that bolsters the surface tensions of "Prisoners" there is a fascinating actor's duel going on.
A film that seems headed toward one conclusion, then veers toward another over 2/₂ of the fastest-moving hours I've seen in a recent movie.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
The plot raises complicated moral questions about how far an anguished person will go for the love of a child. At the same time, it sets up an intricate, horrifying mystery with breathtaking skill.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
"Prisoners" is a dark, deeply serious examination of how loss can unhinge us; it grabs onto you, and you may have trouble shaking it away.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
A gorgeous but manipulative thriller that wants you to ponder Big Questions as it sends a shiver down your spine.
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| Original Score: B
A work of impressive craftsmanship that winds up making us think too much about how it was fashioned rather than what it has to say.
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| Original Score: 6/10
The screenplay is smart, the execution is impeccable, and the holes are few and far between.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
One of the most intense thrillers in recent years. Best performance of Hugh Jackman's career.
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| Original Score: 4.5/5
As gripping as it is grueling, with performances that swing for the fences and a knotty central mystery.
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| Original Score: 3/4
It's a potboiler premise, but in this uncompromisingly dark telling it veers from the procedural to something deeper and more tragic.
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| Original Score: 4/4
Even when audiences start to question the logical leaps, the performances and visuals remain first-rate. The movie doesn't feel bloated. And the final scenes are anything but a cop-out.
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| Original Score: 3/4
It's easy to make a thriller. It's hard to make one that says something about human nature and then, like the hauntingly compelling "Prisoners," finds something inside the genre that validates tying your nerves up in knots.
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| Original Score: 4/5
It absorbs and controls your attention with such assurance that you hold your breath for fear of distracting the people on screen, exhaling in relief or amazement at each new revelation.
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| Original Score: 4/5
A devastating psychological thriller, Prisoners pulls us deep into our worst fear: the Amber Alert. Then it holds us under.
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| Original Score: 3/4
A grade-A genre exercise - but it's a genre predicated on specious reasoning and promiscuous, pseudo-sacrificial suffering.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Director Denis Villeneuve's work with the exemplary actors results in a film of startling impact, packed with twists you don't see coming. You can't shake it.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Throughout this beautifully made, slightly specious exercise in Old Testament revenge, the character-study aspects of "Prisoners" coexist intriguingly with the grisly-inhumanity components.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Hugh Jackman gives the performance of his career as a father seeking two kidnapped girls in Denis Villeneuve's taut thriller.
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| Original Score: 4/5
Though it's nothing you haven't seen before, it's so artfully made and skillfully executed that you won't care a bit.
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| Original Score: 3/4
It's preposterous schlock masquerading as art.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
Prisoners uncoils with a serpent's stealth - and strikes just as suddenly.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
[An] exquisitely calibrated thriller.
"Prisoners" is, above all, an effective thriller, but it wants you to take it more seriously than that. There's no deal-breaking reason not to.
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| Original Score: 4/5
It's the imitation-David Fincher pretentiousness that gets on my nerves.
Prisoners is a dog whistle for Academy voters keyed to a pitch that screams, "For the love of God, nominate me for something!"
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| Original Score: C
This is a powerful, engrossing film that transcends the normal constraints of its genre and is worth your investment of both time and attention.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Prepare to be electrified! When it comes to thrillers, Prisoners is the must-see sensation of the year.
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| Original Score: 4/4
You never sense that any of the players is inhabiting a character. Instead they seem to be dispiritedly reading lines off of an internal teleprompter ...
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| Original Score: 3/5
A sombrely impressive thriller in the style of Mystic River and Zodiac.
Villeneuve is trying like hell to elevate what turns out to be a dumb genre picture...Prisoners is a long sentence.
a movie whose execution and performances are admirable, but its eventual concession to monologuing villains and life-or-death standoffs undermines the honest and substantive character work that precedes it.
It's rooted in 40 years of Hollywood revenge films, yet it also breaks audacious new ground.
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| Original Score: A-
Denis Villeneuve's film requires and rewards your attention in equal measure.
A spellbinding, sensationally effective thriller with a complex moral center that marks a grand-slam English-lingo debut for the gifted Quebecois director Denis Villeneuve.
Viewers who see the movie will find it absolutely riveting, and this is a tribute to the filmmaker's skill and to the excellent cast that brings the story to life.
