Prisoners (2013)
Somewhere in suburban Pennsylvania, a wintry Thanksgiving Day in post-2008 Recession USA, the lives of two families are about to unravel. Keller (Hugh Jackman) is a repairs man by trade, the epitome of self-sufficient survivalist American manhood by nature. The broad strokes introducing his character to us show him praying, hunting deer, professing his love for the Star-Spangled Banner as a piece of music, and telling his son he must always be prepared for everything. By contrast, Keller’s best friend Franklin (Terrence Howard) is more easy-going, laidback, partly because his character is under-written but also clearly because he lets Keller lead him around in their friendship.
A friendship which is about to be tested beyond all limits when on that wintry Thanksgiving Day, the young daughters of Keller and Franklin go missing together. With time ticking, and no physical clues found, Inspector Loki (a heavily blinking Jake Gyllenhaal) tries to handle the case, but soon Keller goes full DIY and takes things into his own hands when he feels the Police aren’t doing enough. Hellbent on eking out the truth, or at least any leads, from a local outcast (Paul Dano) whom the Police rejected as a suspect, Keller kidnaps and tortures this man, with the complicit assistance of Franklin, forced along for the ride.
How far will you personally go, what boundaries would you cross, if your daughters’ lives are on the line? Therein lies the moral dilemma at the heart of Denis Villeneuve’s movie. With this and his other 2013 release (Enemy, a Kafkaesque head-twister also starring Gyllenhaal), Villeneuve transitioned from indie French-language dramas in Quebec to full-blown Hollywood helmsman, ready to step up to the big-budget visionary sci-fi epics he works on now. Yet, for all his skill and competence, and the aesthetic sheen which Roger Deakins’ cinematography brings to Prisoners, the film is ultimately let down by a poor script, riddled with implausibility, clichés, and plot-holes, with pointlessly pretentious discoveries of snakes and labyrinth drawings throughout the investigation, with under-written characters — Viola Davis and Maria Bello try their best as the wives of Franklin and Keller respectively, but have very little to do.
When all is said and done, this is a very masculine film about masculinity: Keller takes it as a personal affront on his manliness that his daughter and family have been targeted without his ever-ready attitude being able to protect or prevent. Prisoners is a movie we can easily categorise as part of post-9/11 US cinema, not in the sense that it is directly about anything that happened that day, but because it clearly invokes some of its lasting and haunting legacies and reverberations. The struggle to live with PTSD and readjust to ‘normal’ life, the struggle of being a witness to horrific violence, and most obviously the use of torture as a means justified by the ends (impossible in that era not to connect it to Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib).
The movie’s shortcoming, however, is its confusion at what to do with this heavy weight: is it your typical ‘liberal’ Hollywood movie that wants to critique toxic masculinity’s emotional repression and condemn the use of torture? Or is it a glorification and celebration of rugged masculinity’s blind faith and stop-at-nothing-when-your-plight-is-right approach? It wants to be both, and the confused script wants to show us that the torture of an innocent man emotionally damages the perpetrator, but in the end the kidnap/torture also ends up giving vital clues, causes the actual killer to commit mishaps, and inadvertently leads Loki to the killer’s house just in time for a climactic rescue. These are signs of a film wanting to have its cake and eat it too. To vaguely ape at big serious themes but also make sure not to alienate its Middle America audience. Not even the technical brilliance of Villeneuve, Deakins et al can rescue that confusion. (September 2023)
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
The fact Denis Villeneuve comes out of something as tricky as a Hollywood franchise sequel with his reputation and auteurist credentials intact speaks volumes. Blade Runner 2049 successfully updates and builds on the universe of the original in evocative and intricate ways. Roger Deakins populates the film with gorgeous imagery as memorable as its predecessor’s, occasionally channeling a Tarkovsky/Stalker aesthetic, especially as we expand out to areas beyond the city. Hans Zimmer picks up the thread of Vangelis’ iconic score, the Pinocchio-esque story of Ryan Gosling’s K does incite as much inquiry about artificial identity, memories and what it means to be human as Scott’s original, and the main plot arguably pushes further in its political ramifications of replicants as exploited under-class edging towards a revolution.
Its box office failings have already been well-documented, and they no doubt have to do with it being too ‘slow’ or ‘arthouse’ for audiences expecting something else. But there’s nothing wrong with being a fascinating hybrid. As for the criticism of its representation of female characters, much seems unwarranted, even at times disingenuous. The world of the movie is a dystopia (and indeed it is one that our current world is not too many steps away from) and to show misogyny does not automatically make a misogynist film — the alternative, to whitewash the ugliness in our world that BR 2049‘s parallel universe is a dark mirror of, would be sheer fantasy. If anything, the real target of such criticisms is not so much the films themselves as the way we consume films, especially purported blockbusters like this one, as mere entertainment machines without giving them any credit as potential forums for debate. (February 2018)
Cinescope 