See this film…
What Works: It takes a standard vigilante thriller premise (Hugh Jackman is the slightly paranoid, survivalist dad whose worst fears come true when his daughter goes missing, and he fears Paul Dano’s mentally handicapped creep is a child molester who has her somewhere) and flips it on its head by having Jackman’s unlawful detention/torture of Dano’s suspect seem morally ambiguous. We wonder if we should really be cheering him on or not. What if Dano didn’t take his daughter? What if he did, but Jackman’s actions are actually hindering the investigation by Jake Gyllenhaal’s street-smart detective? Putting on such queasy territory for the remainder of the film, but also delivering a solid whodunnit with plenty of twists is quite a remarkable accomplishment for a fairly-mainstream thriller. It gets us hooked on the action, and then says that maybe we shouldn’t be.
The performances are uniformly excellent from Viola Davis’ small role as a mother whose anxiety sinks into despair to Gyllenhaal’s twitchy, animalistic acting that’s entirely different than anything we’ve seen from him. The movie’s technical side (gorgeous cinematography, sober editing, wide-awake direction) are also impeccable.
What Doesn’t Work: Jackman acts with a rage we’ve never seen from him before, but I felt it might have lacked specificity. The script is still a little too strongly wedded to the notion of Jackman’s character being a good-guy to really explore what some early scenes seem to be hinting at: that Jackman’s deer-hunting, gun-collecting survivalist may have been a little too eager for something like this to happen to him. Also, the backstory of exactly what is going on becomes too elaborate.
What I Would Have Done Differently: After a disappointing August, and pitiful first few weeks of September, this is the best movie in theaters since at least mid-July. I honestly can’t tear apart a film like this and give people a reason to go watch something else (and worse).