The film’s title is a double entendre. Yes, there are literal prisoners (a kidnapped boy in a basement, a tortured man in a shower). But we are all prisoners of the narrative. Screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski constructs a labyrinth that twists with deceptive elegance.
Jake Gyllenhaal’s Detective Loki is the perfect antidote to Keller’s chaos. With his manicured mustache, obsessive tics, and a torso covered in faded tattoos, Loki is a man running from his own past. Where Keller acts on emotion, Loki acts on gut instinct wrapped in procedure.
styles of Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal? prisoners -2013-
Prisoners is a 2.5-hour descent into darkness. The film meticulously separates its main characters into two "prisons":
When Loki’s interrogation yields no results, and Alex is released due to lack of evidence, Keller Dover takes matters into his own hands. Convinced that Alex knows where the girls are, Keller abducts him, imprisoning him in an abandoned apartment complex and subjecting him to torture to extract a confession. The film’s title is a double entendre
The supporting cast is equally formidable. Viola Davis and Maria Bello portray the mothers of the missing girls, offering contrasting portraits of grief—Davis’s stoic, crumbling resolve versus Bello’s catatonic withdrawal. Terrence Howard and Paul Dano round out the principal players, but the film’s atmosphere is arguably its most important character.
Rain is a character in itself. It falls constantly, washing away blood but never guilt. Deakins uses the weather to externalize the internal turmoil. When Keller buries Alex’s head under a sink of freezing water, the rain outside pounds harder. The visual motif of the maze—seen on Loki’s notes, on the walls of the kidnapper’s lair—mirrors the twisted logic of the plot. Every turn leads to a dead end, until the very last shot. Where Keller acts on emotion, Loki acts on
Unlike Keller, Loki operates within the boundaries of the law, but he is no saint. He beats a priest who confesses to murdering pedophiles. He barges into homes without warrants. Yet, Loki is the only character who sees the whole picture. He follows the clues: the snake tattoos on suspects’ necks, the cryptic mazes drawn on walls, the connection to the 1996 disappearance of a boy.
In the film’s devastating climax, Loki rescues Anna from Holly’s underground bunker (another maze), killing Holly in the process. But Keller is gone—he has fallen into a hidden pit in Holly’s backyard, a trap she had set for Alex years earlier.