Irish News, Features & Sport

Taut is not a word usually associated with movies that exceed the two-hour mark, but at 153 minutes ‘Prisoners’ manages to avoid being one of the sprawling bloated concoctions Hollywood has come to churn out of late. Denis Villeneuve, the film’s Canadian director, has made his English language debut with a tense engaging thriller that achieves that rare feat of being both difficult and highly enjoyable.

Two young girls in Pennsylvania, Joy Birch and Anna Dover, go missing at Thanksgiving. Local introvert, Alex Jones (Paul Dano), a man described as having “the mind of a ten year old,” is suspected, but with insufficient evidence the police are forced to release him. The father of one of the girls, Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) decides to take matters into his own hands and pursue Jones himself, with the reluctant assistance of the second girl’s father, Franklin Birch (Terrence Howard). Continue reading →