In Prisoners, Denis Villeneuve tactfully dangles each of his characters off the precipice of horror. They're always about to cross an ethical line in the sand, nearing a brutal action beat, close to making a devastating choice... and then it quick-fades to black. Each cathartic movement is truncated in a manner as frustrating and poignant as Jake Gyllenhaal's overly pronounced blinks. In a film this precisely designed, everything has multiple layers of meaning, so it's no happy accident that this closing-of-the-door trend spans the entire film. Considering the dark material at play, it seems clear that this stylish tactic - aided by gorgeously glum cinematography from Roger Deakins - amounts to a statement about the solitude of choice and the all-enveloping difficulty of isolation within a mind that has become irrevocably haunted. But the true strength within the film is not in revealing a stanant answer to the questions posed throughout the film but in inviting us to participate in our own private study of guilt under duress.

Hugh Jackman's Keller Dover has lost his daughter. Taken after Thanksgiving supper, her whereabouts are as much a question mark as the identity of the culprit. On the alignment chart, Dover is chaotic neutral - a raging, by-all-means-type who stomps over whatever moral boundary stands in the way of his getting his daughter back. Jackman harnesses unbridled rage in a manner that he's never quite been able to touch upon before. This is the darkness we've always expected of the man behind the Wolverine and his performance here is surely one of his finest. But Dover is not the only character at play (or even the central one strictly speaking) nor is he the only one intent on finding his lost child.

Read more: Film Review: "Prisoners"