THE NEW-YORK TIMES [...] But Mr. Villeneuve, a French Canadian director whose previous movies include “Incendies” and “Polytechnique,” is more invested in mood and meaning than in plot. A connoisseur of grim tales — “Incendies” is about the endless trauma of a Middle Eastern civil war; “Polytechnique” is based on the true story of a shooting rampage at a Montreal university — he has an intense, almost philosophical interest in the nature of evil. [...] Nearly all of “Prisoners” takes place within a single week, but Mr. Villeneuve wisely — if also somewhat cruelly — refuses to speed up, or to spike the action with jolts of adrenaline. He captures, with impressive discipline, just how slowly time can move during a crisis, how the static condition of not knowing can press down on every moment. Panic can be paralyzing, as it is for Keller’s wife and Joy’s parents, but acting rashly, as Keller is inclined to, can have catastrophic effects. “Prisoners” is the kind of movie that can quiet a room full of casual thrill-seekers. 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. By the end, you may be a little worn out, and perhaps also slightly let down by the fussily clever revelations that wrap up the story, but in the meantime, you are a willing captive, unable tell the difference between dread and delight.
Posted on: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 16:36:51 +0000
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