Movie Review: Prisoners

Ok. This one's a bit tricky. While Prisoners was a gritty, incredibly well-acted, smartly constructed and thought provoking crime drama thriller, the film's running time was utterly excessive that it almost felt like a lengthy prison sentence in itself. The pacing was decidedly slow, which was not enough to generate real gut level of excitement, and it also had too many meaningless distractions that it lost the terrific story it had set up during the first half. But again, that's not to say that the film was bad - it was far from it actually. The performances were top-notch. Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal gave excellently layered performances. The rest of the cast also kept me engaged as well as the stunningly gritty cinematography. Prisoners wasn't perfect as it lost me a little towards the end, but the film also had brilliant moments, which made this a bit of a mix bag for me. 6.5