Prisoners has gotten a huge amount of positive buzz, and it’s absolutely justified. With top-notch acting, a killer script that doles out thrills and heartbreak, not to mention the great visual style, it’s a film that brings awards season in with a bang.  This is a grand old roller-coaster, the kind that winds up and up, only to send you spiraling down with your heart in your throat. And it begs you to ask the hard questions, giving no easy answers.  The maze in the title art is a good indication that this film will be dealing with a story that twists and turns. You might get lost in the details, but the award winning cast makes it a puzzle you can’t help but try to solve for yourself.

Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) is a hard working guy with a family he adores. He’s good friends with neighbor Franklin Birch (Terrence Howard), and Kelley’s wife Grace (Maria Bello) is besties with Franklin’s wife Nancy (Viola Davis). So when they all get together and the Davis house for Thanksgiving, it the usual rumpus of amped kids, sloshed adults and food comas. Later in the evening, the adults notice their little girls are missing. A frantic search leads to the town oddball Alex (Paul Dano), a man with the “IQ of a ten year old”, but did he do anything? Keller knows Alex is hiding something, and when police detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) has to let Alex go, Keller decides to get to the bottom of things himself.

Director Denis Villeneuve knows how to push buttons and keep the tension at a low simmer throughout. Subplots with Alex’s aunt Holly (a superb Melissa Leo), the local Catholic priest (Len Cariou, Damages) and Loki’s push-pull with the police captain (Wayne Duvall, Lincoln) add to the overall tension and the sense that time is running out. But the big buzz about Prisoners is it’s no holds barred violence. Prisoners doesn’t go for the balletic, artsy scenes. As with the character’s reaction to the missing kids (Bello is absolutely heartbreaking, with pain so raw you can feel it in your throat), when things get violent it’s raw, ugly, and painful to watch. Having Jackman play against his usual super good guy type makes it more emotional. You feel for him, but when he starts to slide off the rails, it’s animalistic. His performance is jaw dropping.

Kudos to the art and costume department, that nailed the look of a middle/lower-middle class Pennsylvania town. Makeup turns Leo from the striking woman she is to a person you’d see at a thrift store buying beanie babies. Gyllenhaal’s Loki is a detective with a neck tattoo, whose overall vibe is I Have A Dark Past. The actor plays into that, and considering Loki is the name of the Norse god of mischief? Villeneuve introduces Loki in such a way that I didn’t rule anyone out in this mystery.

Though after the film’s two hours and thirty-three you may feel like a prisoner yourself, it’s definitely worth the endurance sitting. Plus, after the cathartic hours spent on the edge of your seat, the film does give you a bit of light at the end of the tunnel, and an ending that can be open to several interpretations, depending on who you’ve been rooting for. Prisoners is a film that is set for some serious award season chatter, and rightly so.