Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Prisoners

(2013)

Here’s an extremely powerful, haunting, and horrifying story. Hugh Jackman has a daughter he loves. One day she goes missing, and he and his wife, Maria Bello, begin to freak out. She goes limp, unable to deal with things. He turns himself in a vigilante. He suspects a deeply disturbed young man, Paul Dano, playing yet another weirdo, who has been hanging around. He kidnaps him and walls him up in an abandoned apartment building, and begins to torture him. It will remind you of Mystic River, in that you will soon realize he has the wrong man. But he’s too committed to turn back now. His best friend is Terrence Howard, who is with him at first, but soon doesn’t have any stomach for it. Trying to find the girl and rein in Hugh’s excesses and fury is a cop, Jake Gyllenhaal. The ending is a real stunner, I didn’t see it coming at all.