Prisoners review

Genre: Drama, Thriller.
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davies, Maria Bello, Melissa Leo, Paul Dano.
Year Of Release: 2013
Certificate: 15 (UK)
Runtime: 153 Minutes
Director: Denis Villeneuve

Synopsis: "When Keller Dover's daughter and her friend go missing, he takes matters into his own hands as the police pursue multiple leads and the pressure mounts. But just how far will this desperate father go to protect his family?" IMDB

I will start off saying I was very apprehensive going into "The Prisoners", I have personally never been a fan of Gyllenhaal's acting I always found his style to be boring. Hugh Jackman on the other hand I am a huge fan of being a lover of X-Men for roughly half of my life.

Hugh Jackman in this film was truly a spectacle to behold, he commands the screen with every second he is on it, his performance as a broken father really resonates with the audience, he really makes you pull at your own moral compass. How far would we truly go to save our blood, Jake Gyllenhaal gives an equally as good performance as Detective Loki (yes his name really is that cool). Gyllenhaal is equally as powerful. He incredibly embodies the troubled detective void of his emotions, culminating in real feeling ticks and twitches you begin to feel really embody the characters progression.

I would personally say it is career best performances from Jackman and Gyllenhall, but that is to not take away from the rest of the cast, Terrance Howard is truly back to the quality of acting that won him his Academy Award nomination for "Hustle & Flow" and the performance he gave in "Crash". While Paul Dano might not have had as much screen time as some of the other actors, he was truly superb playing the emotionally and intellectually stunted Alex Jones who is said to have the IQ of  ten year old.

While the film is not entirely perfect, Denis Villeneuve makes and incredible film for his Hollywood

debut and first English language film. His use of tension building is second to none in recent years, "edge of the seat" stuff in a understatement, you start at the edge of your seat, by the end of the film you are on the floor. It has a wonderful noir feel to the film, and the use of Roger Deakins' cinematography was a true spectacle to behold, his work has been nominated for twelve Academy Awards so he is doing something right.

Aaron Guzikowski writes some of the most enjoyable scenes I have seen in a thriller film for a long time, it is hard to believe that he is so early in his writing career considering his amazing grasp of twists and turns and brings a true mystery to the audience. There is a few moments of the film that are predictable but that happens with ANY film written, however for a relative newcomer Guzikowski is superb in his work.

Overall, the film a truly a roller coaster ride of emotions that will keep you enticed from start to the end filled with powerful performances from the entire cast. The film does have a pretty long running time which may scare a few people off, but I assure you it is worth the long watch, that is if you are open to some violence and a few torture based scenes. If you get passed these aspects you will be in for a treat of a wonderfully shot, brilliantly directed and beautifully acted film by the leads.

9/10

Hugh Jackman casts doubt on Wolverine future!!!

Hugh, Hugh why would you do this to me? Are you trying to destroy me?

This news comes at a huge shock considering the third instalment on the "Wolverine"film, Hugh Jackman himself has cast doubt on returning as the character.

"I don’t know whether or not I will do this next movie. I am really proud of (The Wolverine) and I am excited to develop something with Jim Mangold from the beginning because that is a great ride. That’s exciting, to see what we come up with but I have a very high expectation of what it would need to be [for me to star in it] and if it doesn’t reach those, I won’t be doing it."

Hugh Jackman talks The Wolverine sequel

It came out earlier this month that Fox were wanting to re-team James Mangold and Hugh Jackman on the big screen with a sequel to this years "The Wolverine". Yesterday Jack was speaking to Entertainment Weekly an had this to say.

“I don’t want to dive into another one until we have a compelling reason to do another one,” he explains. “I love the character, he’s kind of like a best friend to me, and I don’t ever want to take [him] or the fans for granted. ...I think we’ve got a great opportunity to make something really cool, but it has to be great. That’s what we’re all working toward... I was on the phone with Jim Mangold last night. There are some really cool ideas that I’m dying to tell you, but that would be giving away a secret that is not even [fully] formed yet.”

Hugh Jackman talks "Days Of Future Past"

Next Summer we get to see the ultimate in X-Men movies when they bring one of their greatest story arcs to the big screen in "X-Men: Days Of Future Past". The film will see the combination of the original cast along with the new guys and girls from "X-Men: First Class". Hugh Jackman has been speaking to Access Hollywood, here is what he had to say;

"I know, having sat at Comic-Con on that panel with that extraordinary cast, I keep saying it's like two movies in one, but with the size of it it's really three in one. It really is going to blow people away because of the story. Bryan Singer, I think, is going to become the first director to make increasingly better movies in a franchise, I'm not sure if there's anyone else that's done it."

"Prisoners" trailer and poster

Whenever I see Jake Gyllenhaal attached to a film I instantly switch off, then I see the name of Hugh Jackman there an my interest peaks. They are the two leading roles in the upcoming Crime Thriller "Prisoners" anybody else notice that the majority of Jackmans roles always seem to have him looking like a bit of a vagrant/down an out guy. This film looks pretty bad ass, could be a great watch if it is anything like the trailer portrays it, Warner Bros. have given us a poster and a trailer for the film check them out below.

"The Wolverine" samurai poster

 

Every day film fans, don't really know how excited the "comic geek" fans out there are for the upcoming Marvel film "The Wolverine". Wolverine is probably the most badass character in the Marvel universe, and now he a samurai badass!

"The Wolverine" official trailer

We've finally got it! This film looks more an more beautiful every day, Hugh Jackman you bad ass man. James Mangold seems to have saved Wolverine after Gavin Hood made that abomination back in '09. Can't wait for the Summer, Superman, Iron Man and Wolverine, are they trying to cause nerdgasms? Ha ha.

James Mangold releases "The Wolverine" teaser

James Mangold is an absolute legend, for letting us see an advanced sneak peak at "The Wolverine". You should all follow him on Twitter to see some stuff he posts.

The tweaser. vine.co/v/bDExaiMjJ1F
— James Mangold (@mang0ld) March 25, 2013

Is that Jean Grey? Are we finally getting Jean back, after she was stupidly killed off in "X-Men 3"? Oh God, I certainly hope so. Mangold has also promised us an even longer teaser tomorrow which will be 20 seconds longer, before we get an official trailer on Wednesday. 

"The Wolverine" new poster and pictures

This new poster for the upcoming kind of reboot of "The Wolverine" is epic, the world is crumbled around him. What on earth has he been doing in Japan?

Also with this new poster we have been blessed by Entertainment Weekly with some new promo pictures for the film. James Mangold did say that towards the end of March, we would see a lot "The Wolverine" stuff coming our way. Man he did not lie.

"The Wolverine" actor portraits

The production on "The Wolverine" wrapped up recently and on the last day director some time off filming to take some pretty cool portraits of the cast.

"The Wolverine" new picture

With the first teaser for "The Wolverine" a little over a month away we have been blessed with a new photo from the film along with a Tweet that said "The past is always behind you, but the memories still remain".

PHOTO: The past is always behind you, but the memories still remain. #TheWolverine twitter.com/WolverineMovie…
— The Wolverine (@WolverineMovie) February 20, 2013

Latest "Wolverine" photo

Last week there was a picture released showing Wolverine suited and booted rocking his Adamantium claws, an to say the picture looked bad ass would be an understatement on par with saying John Rambo only killed a few people ha ha. Now we have a better quality image courtesy of the guys over at Empire Magazine.

James Mangold talks "The Wolverine"

Director James Mangold has given us a little inside to his upcoming film "The Wolverine", he is claiming that there will be a much darker tone to this instalment plus about 90% of it will be set in Japan. He has also said that his intentions are to completely "reboot" the film with a couple of tie ins to "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" the main one being Hugh Jackman.

The mixing of cultures will give the film an added dynamic that the last didn't have, Wolverine's stories that take place in Japan are incredible if you haven't read them I recommend you read them somehow. They could translate amazingly onto the big screen if done correctly although Mangold wanted to incorporate a lot of martial arts into the film, he also wants to preserve the animalistic nature of Wolverine's fighting style.

"The wonderful opportunity for me with this film is that 90 percent of it takes place in Japan, and even though other elements remain constant from the other pictures, namely Hugh Jackman, we kind of got our chance to reboot the tone and go a little darker and a little deeper than they’ve gone before with this character."

"There is a significant amount of Japanese spoken in the movie, and the cast is almost entirely Japanese. So there is this wonderful sense of cross-pollination between a very Western character and a far Eastern culture, and I think it’s very cool and something we haven’t seen so far. I think there is a lot of ways that Japanese film, Japanese fighting, Japanese martial arts have had an effect on this movie. And certainly the movie is dripping with Japanese tradition both cinematically, fighting-wise and philosophically as well." 

"One of the things that has always been a feature of Wolverine in the comics is that he has a berserker rage, that he has anger and some of his abilities are driven by something more primal… Honestly, to get really pissed off—not cute pissed off, not quippy pissed off, not funny pissed off or cigar-chomping pissed off, just pissed off—that can then help drive the fighting, drive the combat. That is interesting for me and then for the character, some of the jet fuel underneath some of the combat in the film."

"The Wolverine" poster

How bad ass is this poster!!! This film is going to be epic, I can't wait to see Hugh Jackman back on the big screen doing what he does best.

"Days Of Future Past" will be X-Men meets Terminator

I had never heard of the "Days Of Future Past" story arch before it was announced that the sequel to "X-Men First Class" would revolve around it. Then I done a bit of research, holy heck this film will kick ass! The sheer vast-nest of how epic this story is, will take a ballsy director to make it watchable. Sentinels ruling the planet, old man Wolverine and huge character development. Millar recently described the upcoming film and had some choice words to say "X-Men meets Terminator".

"Vaughn is going for a big sci-fi style thing with X-Men: Days of Future Past.”
He also teased the plot of the film, calling it “X-Men meets The Terminator”.
“You’ve got robots, you’ve got time travel, you’ve got superheroes – it’s got everything in one film,” he claimed.
He also said that it is “no spoiler on [his] part” to say that the film goes into an apocalyptic future.
“Cost-wise it’s going to go up, and ambitious-wise it’s gone up,” Millar noted. “But Vaughn can handle it. Vaughn made Kick-Ass for $28 million."

Of course the cost is going up, you can't have Wolverine ripping apart a Sentinel for cheap can you? I think not. They have to have Wolverine in the film right? If they don't they sure as hell are missing out on probably the best thing to come out of the X-Men franchise an that is Hugh Jackman bad assing it up as Wolverine.