‘Prisoners’: Kidnap flick holds you with top actors, high tension for much of run
September 25, 2013
The title “Prisoners” is multifaceted in meaning, referring primarily to two young girls who are kidnapped off the street of a rural Pennsylvania town on Thanksgiving Day, but also to the parents of those kidnapped girls who grow frustrated with the sputtering police investigation and take matters into their own hands – they take a person of interest captive – as well as the homicide detective who is tripped up constantly by the interfering parents and an unsupportive higher-up, and the burnt-out working-class town that has suffered through decades of tragedy.
It’s a broad net, probably broader than screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski (the Brockton native who penned “Contraband”) intended, but the material in the hands of Denis Villeneuve (whose haunting 2010 exploration of arcane family roots in the Middle East, “Incendies,” garnered an Academy Award nomination) is narrow, focused and rife with tension. That’s the gift and bane of “Prisoners”: eternal, dark bleakness. Take either of David Fincher’s serial killer flicks, “Zodiac” or “Se7en,” and you’d have a good idea what Villeneuve is shooting for. Continue reading
If there’s one thing painfully obvious (like, “My Best Friend’s Wedding” obvious), it’s that Luke and Kate are meant to be together, but thankfully Swanberg – one of the early adaptors of mumblecore filmmaking (the lo-fi indie film movement in which production values, most notably sound, play second fiddle to the visceral and ideological elements) along with the Duplass brothers (“Puffy Chair”) and Andrew Bujalski (“Funny Ha Ha”) – is after something a bit more nuanced and un-Hollywood. For inexplicable reasons Chris leaves Kate, which further enables Kate and Luke’s hop-infused brewmance. The pair, along with other vat rats from work, spend many a late night lighting up the dingy side of Chicago, while Jill, conveniently a teacher, sits at home toiling away on art projects for her special-needs students. 
But there would be times when a girl would not show up for class, and when I would ask why, I was told routinely it was because they had gone “on the run” and was likely using or worse. There were also times one would have a fit during our sessions and need to be restrained by the ready staff members in the room. It was violent and shocking to me. The girls were raw, sweet and tough, yet highly vulnerable. “Fragile fierceness” is what I called it. 
Cellphones naturally don’t work (though the reason why is solid) and each swing of a creaky door yields either a booby trap, knife-wielding psychopath or false alarm gasp from the audience.
To underscore that, and for anyone who’s of the mindset that we’re beyond the Civil Rights era and affirmative action and that opportunity is out there for all to take on equal terms, sit through “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” and see if you still feel that way. Perhaps the best way to describe “The Butler” is as a short, painful history of the black man in America. The film centers on one, who grew up basically a slave in the early 1900s and went on to serve eight presidents as a staff server in the White House. 
The plot moves like whiplash. L.A. is now a wasteland reminiscent of the South African ghettos that the wayward aliens in “District 9” inhabited and the rich reside on the lush, luxury ring-world (thank you Larry Niven!) of the title that’s just a 20-minute shuttle ride up into the sky. Up there, universal health care is a reality, they have medi-pods that can heal anything from cancer to the clap. They can even rebuild your face should it get shot off – if your brain still works. But to get a medi-pod to heal, you must be a barcoded citizen of Elysium; if you live on Earth, you’re living in the new third world and there’s no grand social program to cover your ass. 
For those not in the know, Linda Lovelace (born Linda Boreman) was the first adult performer to become a household name and regular punchline for Johnny Carson and other late-night talk show hosts as the free-love ’60s melted into the commercialism of the ’70s. Part of that was because she was simply the star of one of the first adult films with high-quality production values and (ahem) a plot – one in which Lovelace’s ingénue can’t find her clitoris because it’s in the back of her throat. The film caught fire (it would make $600 million, and all Lovelace got was $1,250). Hugh Hefner (played with avuncular smarm by James Franco) was a fan, Lovelace got the red carpet treatment and some even embraced the film as an anthem of female sexual liberation. But behind closed doors was a different story – one of abuse at the hands of Lovelace’s husband, Chuck Traynor. 
The head trip objective runs the narrative arc fairly straight up, with a few scatological sprinkles and moronic lunacy along the way. In most every scene, Jamie’s shrieking hubris consumes the screen, and it doesn’t help that he can’t speak Spanish. As far as the project’s origins, you can almost see director Sebastián Silva and Cera cooking it up after coming down from an altered state: “Hey man, all we need is an investor or your indie famous mug on Kickstarter.” One-time child star Gaby Hoffman checks in as the title character continually at odds with Jamie. She’s a true free spirit, exemplified resoundingly as she drinks cocktails with the boys in the buff. Jamie, who sees her as an interloper, tells her to cover up, but no one else cares. So goes the movie. She’s tuned in, in touch and can speak the language; he’s just an ugly American. That’s the trip. 
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