This
suspense drama deals with missing children, an angry father (Hugh Jackman)
determined to get them back, and a possible suspect (Paul Dano) who appears to
be simple but may know more than he’s letting on. In other words, it has all
the ingredients of a shitty revenge flick, or a Death Wish remake. But it isn’t.
It’s
a December day in Pennsylvania when two little girls go missing. (Maria Bello
plays Jackman’s wife, and Terrence Howard and Viola Davis play the parents of
one of the girls.) A police detective who’s solved all his cases (Jake
Gyllenhaal) and a seemingly obvious perpetrator (Dano) suggest that the crime
will be solved quickly. But the expected forensic evidence doesn’t implicate
the suspect. And the detective’s discovery of a old man’s body in a cellar
suggests a more complicated scenario.
As
he did in he previous feature, Incendies,
director Denis Villeneuve contructs the story like a puzzle and makes the
quasi-suburban nowhere-ness of the setting seem as memorable as he did the Middle Eastern desert in his previous film. The script is by Aaron Guzikowski (Contraband).
There
is some violence in the movie, but it is not cathartic. It is difficult, and
the movie makes you feel conflicted and a little creepy. Nearly all the characters
have moral uncertainty. It’s so well put together that I didn’t mind so much
that the explanation for what happened is extremely far-fetched.
IMDb link
No comments:
Post a Comment