Jake Gyllenhaal Shines in Thought-Provoking "Prisoners"

Jake Gyllenhaal brings the intensity in Prisoners.

Although commercials made it seem like a variation on the Taken formula, Prisoners is actually a pretty serious drama with a lot on its mind.

In general, it occupies the same playground as Gone Baby, Gone, another pulpy and thought-provoking crime thriller about an investigator’s dogged pursuit to solve a child abduction case. But there’s also a strong political thread that recalls Zero Dark Thirty in the way it forces viewers to consider the value of torture.

The film revolves around the reactions of two sets of parents (Hugh Jackman and Mario Bello and Terrence Howard and Viola Davis) when their little girls are abducted by an unknown villain. When a mentally unstable suspect (Paul Dano) emerges and the cops aren’t able to find suitable evidence to charge him, the Jackman character takes measures into his own hands. Each parent responds to his actions in a different way, serving as analogs for the differing ways people respond to the use of torture tactics.

To say much more about the plot would ruin the film, but I will say that it’s beautifully lensed by Roger Deakins and that, although quite long, it’s well paced and grippingly directed by director Denis Villeneuve. The film also closes with a perfect denouement, which is a rarity in movies and another way in which it echoes both Gone Baby, Gone and Zero Dark Thirty.

Jackman is great as the desperate dad driven to extreme measures, but it’s Jake Gyllenhaal as the cop on the case who steals the movie. Although his Detective Loki handles many of his early encounters with a practiced calm, there’s a coiled-spring intensity to him that’s emphasized by his twitchiness and constant blinking. This is a man with a past (there’s all those tattoos and one scene implies he’s the product of an abusive childhood), and while he’s instantly sympathetic, there’s an unsettling sense that the guy could just go off at any moment.

Loki is a great character, and like J.J. Gittes in Chinatown or Patrick Kensie in Gone Baby, Gone (I know, I keep bringing up that movie, but it’s so good), he’s a detective you want to see tackle other cases in other movies. That’s unlikely to happen, but there’s no denying that Gyllenhaal, often cast for gentle quirkiness, is a total revelation in the role. Even being a fan of his previous work, I wasn’t really prepared for what he brings to the table here. It’s easily a top five performances from 2013 in my book, even if it didn’t get treated that way during awards season.

There’s a high level of melodrama on display and the film has the type of circumstantial “everything fits together” web that often plagues crime dramas. For those reasons, not to mention its dark subject matter and general dreariness, Prisoners isn’t for everyone. However, I found it to be one of the better films from last year. Ultimately, the character work, ace tech aspects and thematic and tonal strengths of the movie outweigh any negatives. A-

David O. Russell Once Again Spins Convention Into Originality with “American Hustle”

American Hustle is actually a really funny film.

American Hustle is typical David O. Russell.

It is a film with little narrative surprises—one that does all of the predictable things one might expect from its genre, and yet, somehow it has emerged as one of the year’s best films just as his Silver Linings Playbook and The Fighter did in recent years.

The reason is simple. As with those films, Russell is playing connect the dots but refusing to draw straight lines. He’s working within the confines of convention, and yet his script is so zippy and filled with grace notes that there’s a real specificity to what he’s doing. It’s rare that Russell tries to wow with some story innovation; instead, he concentrates on character, putting effort not on this or that plot mechanic but on a palpable sense of depth, heart and humanity.

Loosely based on the ABSCAM scandal of the late 1970s, American Hustle focuses on Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), a pair of lovers/con artists who are forced by an FBI agent named Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) into an elaborate sting operation to entrap corrupt politicians, including Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), the mayor of Camden, New Jersey. A variety of different issues arise to complicate the job and the central romance, including the involvement of Rosenfeld’s manic-depressive wife (Jennifer Lawrence), his growing friendship with Polito, and the desperate ambition of DiMaso, which ultimately puts the leads in the crosshairs of some dangerous mafia members.

The plot could make for a serious drama, but Russell keeps the tone light and there are several big laughs, many of which are courtesy of the deadpan genius of Louis C.K. as DiMaso’s boss at the FBI. Ocean’s 11 and The Sting are good comparison points, and Russell intentionally echoes classic Scorsese pictures like Goodfellas. However, the film I was most reminded of was Argo, another ’70s set capper film about a hard-to-believe, government-funded operation. However, whereas last year's Best Picture winner had a major problem fleshing out its characters (as outlined in my review), American Hustle, like all Russell films, excels at turning almost every pivotal character into a living, breathing person.

Oscars for costume design and makeup and hair-styling are
most likely in the bag.

It helps that Russell has a deep bench of fantastic actors, a great deal of whom he cultivated on his last two films. Bale and Adams top the excellent work they did in The Fighter, presenting the type of understanding partnership most would envy. When running a successful con, Rosenfeld’s motto is to do it from the feet up, and that expression might as well be used to describe the multilayered work they do here. Both actors deserve to be classified as two of the best of their generation, and the range they show in this film is another testament to that fact.

After reaching career heights with Silver Linings Playbook, Cooper and Lawrence are once again tasked with playing frantic and unstable characters, but this time they get to be unlikeable so no punches are pulled. Meanwhile, Renner emerges as the stealth weapon of the film, grounding the whole thing with his portrayal of a decent man undone by his overzealous desire to serve his constituents. His role is the least showy of the bunch, but, especially when considering how starkly in contrasts with his two Oscar-nominated performances, it’s hard to ignore.

American Hustle has been positioned as a year-end awards player, but it’s gotten some kickback as too lightweight for the Academy. It’s not a perfect film -- the script confusingly glosses over the finer details of most of the cons, many of which don’t make complete sense upon reflection -- but I’d argue against the notion that this is just some entertaining piece of fluff.

It’s a meditation on dissatisfaction, insecurity, desperation, reinvention, and the lengths people will go to improve their lot in life. It’s a hubristic tragedy, a crackerjack capper and a complicated love story all rolled into one. It’s one of the best films of the year. A

Lawless Underwhelms Despite Ingredients for Greatness

The Bondurant boys don't lay down for nobody.

As a big fan of the elegiac and uncompromisingly grim poetry director John Hillcoat wrought with The Proposition and The Road, I was massively anticipating his latest film, Lawless.

Reteaming with Proposition screenwriter Nick Cave for a crime drama about a mythic family of moonshiners during the Prohibition era just seemed like the perfect fit for Hillcoat’s sensibilities. And then, on top of that, he landed a stacked cast, including Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Gary Oldman and regular collaborator Guy Pearce, to name just a few.

Unfortunately, the film doesn’t come close to reaching the epic heights of my expectations, or, more importantly, its own straining ambition. And believe me this venture is ambitious, as it reaches to cover similar themes to those explored in films as diverse as The Godfather and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (two personal favorites).

Externally it has all the trappings of a classic – an authentic milieu, great archetypes, a distinguished style, and immersive music (courtesy of Cave and Warren Ellis) – but it’s mostly hollow otherwise, and so it ends up coming across like a somewhat tired version of a familiar story.

In some ways it reminded me of an inverted Gangster Squad, another recent take on the crime genre that was also clichéd, but had the good sense to be fun and bubbly besides. Here, the craftsmanship, authenticity and scope are so keenly evident that you’re forced to take the enterprise at face value, which more apparently exposes the shortcomings.

Set in 1931, Lawless focuses on the Bondurant brothers, a trio of Virginia moonshiners comprised of the taciturn Forrest (Hardy), the hard-living Howard (Jason Clarke), and the sensitive Jack (Shia LaBeouf). Thanks to Forrest and Howard, the family has become legendary as indestructible forces of nature, but, as the runt of the litter, Jack seems made of different cloth… until, well, he doesn’t.

The Bondurant’s use their gas station/diner as a front for their illegal activities, but the times are changing, and soon shady government officials are trying to force their way into getting a piece of the pie from all area moonshiners. Unlike their scared compatriots in distillery, the Bondurants resist the shakedown, drawing the ire of Charlie Rakes (Pearce), a fiendish deputy brought in from Chicago to make the locals toe the line.

Guy Pearce brings a fey creepiness to his villainous role.

It’s a great shell for a narrative, but the film is largely limited by half-baked characterizations. Jack and Forrest are the leads of the film, but they come across as pale versions of Michael Corleone and Bud White (Russell Crowe’s LA Confidential character), respectively. Both men are given love interests (Mia Wasikowska as the preacher’s daughter and Chastain as a dancer from Chicago), but the relationship are superficially drawn at best, and the actresses are largely wasted.

Nevertheless, the cast, which includes a cameo from Oldman as gangster Floyd Banner, is uniformly solid. Pearce gives the most memorable turn as the perversely grotesque Rakes, a man who greatly overestimates his ability to dominate the locals because he considers himself above their hick way of life. His scenery chewing expressly contrasts with the more measured approach of the rest of the cast, which is supposedly a stark change from the more grounded heavies in the source material, The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant (Jack’s grandson).

One wishes one or two other liberties had been taken in an effort to better flesh out what plays like an awfully ordinary and telegraphed tale. As it is, this is an assured film brimming with rich atmosphere, but, unfortunately, it’s not much more than that. B-