Looking at: Prisoners

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Elementary my dear...

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Gyllenhaal's Detective Loki and Jackman's Keller Dover often find themselves at odds.

Cable Television has no shortage of procedural cop drama mystery shows. Series like Castle, Bones, CSI, NCIS, and Law and Order are all, essentially, just modernized version of classic detective stories, albiet with much more sex and drama. They're about people solving crimes, and occasionally, examining how far those people are willing to solve those crimes.

Prisoners plays out like a long version of one of these shows. Were it to be an episode of CSI, it'd easily be one of their best, up there with the infamous Tarantino episode. It's an incredibly well thought out, methodical, and twisting journey into some really dark places.

Taken

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Paul Dano's Alex Jones is creepy, even against Jackman's violent nature.

The setup of the story is that on Thanksgiving day two young girls go missing. One is the daughter of Keller and Grace Dover (Hugh Jackman, Maria Bello) and the other is the daughter of Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard, Viola Davis). The case get's picked up by superstar detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) who turns up Alex Jones (the always creepy Paul Dano). Alex is the prime suspect, but is released after no evidence is found and it's determined he couldn't do it due to his mental handicap giving him the intelligence of a ten year old.

Keller decides that, regardless of what people say, Alex is guilty. After hearing him say something cryptic, and witnessing the kid acting like a complete creep, Keller kidnaps Alex and interrogates him with increasing violence. Meanwhile Loki struggles to solve the case, clashing with a lack of evidence, uncooperative suspects, and even Keller himself.

There's a number of twists and turns throughout the movie, with a particularly great third act to tie it all together. The theme of running into dead ends and getting lost is reinforced with images of mazes littered through the movie, and it's an interesting level of uncomfortable to watch. You constantly want to know where the movie is going, and just when you think you figured it out you, and the movie, hit a dead end and are sent down another dark corridor.

More interesting is the parallel drawn between the various "prisoners". During the movie Keller's daughter is held captive, while he himself holds a man with the mind of a child captive trying to find her. It's interesting and uncomfortable to watch, going to a place that most cable TV shows wouldn't touch with a twenty foot pole.

Breaking the Woodwork

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The film repeatedly posits the question "how far is too far?"

On the technical side Prisoners is a great looking movie. Shots are expertly framed, and the lighting perfectly sets the mood in each scene. There's a pervasive mood of dreariness and morbid sadness, which helps to sell the serious nature of the film. Pennsylvania has never looked more depressing, and the late Autumn mood fits perfectly with the harsh nature of the situation.

A special mention goes to the audio work here. The sound design of Prisoners is fantastic. Music is used sparingly, and when it is the dark style of it, highlighted by high pitched strings, sells the hell out the scene. It creates a tense mood, never really letting you know what's about to happen, and it fits well with the maze-like structure of the movie. Special notice has gone into the sound effect work as well, with footsteps creating audible creaks, and there's an expert level of attention to detail in minor things like rainfall, the old and decrepit buildings, and background noises that help construct a scene. If Prisoners is supposed to be structured like an old radio detective serial, then it really shows in the sound design.

Not Wolverine

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Alex Jones with his aunt played by Melissa Leo.

On to the acting. Maria Bello and Viola Davis both do great work as the grieving mothers, giving diametrically opposed views on how people cope with loss. One mother just crawls into bed and sleeps the whole time, only waking to cry, or experience short bouts of hysteria. The other chooses to participate in the search, going to great lengths, even beyond the bounds of her own moral fiber. Both are great to watch, but Davis' performance as Nancy Birch is truly marvelous and she sells the hell out her character.

Paul Dano is a creepy looking dude, and he's often at his best when he exploits this. He's made a name for himself as the quiet, "there's something wrong with this dude" kind of character and his performance as the mentally handicapped Alex Jones is wonderful. He gives off an air of knowing more then he lets on, but it's all hidden in a tangled web of whatever is left of his mind.

Jake Gyllenhaal is one of my favorite working actors, and it's always a treat to see him at work. He manages to come across as a caring scumbag, a guy that wants to solve this case for his own reasons before anything else. He's greasy, he's scummy, but he's also professional and a damn good detective. Gyllenhaal also worked with the director on Enemy, released the same year, and his recent work in Nightcrawler has also been praised. He's been busy lately, and it shows.

Hugh Jackman and Terrence Howard both do great work as the father figures, but it's Jackman's performance as Keller Dover is the real standout of the film. He's angry and violent, but also tired. He looks like a man at the brink of his sanity, but also struggling with the morality of what he's doing. You want to root for him, but at the same time his actions are so deplorable that you feel bad for doing so.

Heaven Sent

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By the end, everyone is broken and tired, no exceptions.

Prisoners is a great film, probably one of the best sleepers from last year. It's a dark, twisting tale that rewards patience. It may drag on at times, but it weaves a story that defies simple guesses. Anyone sick of procedural and copy/paste cops shows on TV, and yearning for a true mystery, owe it to themselves to check out Prisoners. It's sure to keep you captive all the way through.

Looking at: Binding of Isaac Rebirth

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The Gospel of Isaac

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Insanity, now in .GIF form.

Binding of Isaac is an uncomfortable game. Not to play, no the mix of twin-stick bullet hell and rogue-like dungeon crawling is addictive and hugely entertaining. Rather, BoI is uncomfortable to look at and experience, and it likes it that way. Casting you as a naked little boy you must delve into the underworld to face your fears and escape your mother. BoI is certainly weird, but is it, and more importantly, it's recent re-release any good?

I always find it weird that Christian mythology is so underexplored in gaming. The Bible and related Christian historical books are filled with weird shit that could be worked into games. BoI is, in some ways, one of the most biblical games I've ever played outside of strictly Christian games. Much of it's imagery, bestiary and story are references to biblical mythology. Even the name comes from the story of Abraham almost sacrificing his son Isaac to God as a show of devotion.

Covered in horror

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One of the bosses from vanilla BoI.

Of course, there's also the other imagery of BoI. When it's not biblical, it's horrifying. The levels are littered with fecal mounds, your enemies are twisted monsters made of tumours and scabs, your main attack is crying, there's blood and urine everywhere and many of your powerups seem to do bodily harm to your character. I don't know if this is some sort of political statement, but it's certainly enough to freak out most casual gamers. There's an overwhelming feeling of disgust at BoI's visuals, and the thought of what some items or monsters represent, never mind the fact your own character, is enough to make your stomach churn.

Visually BoI is a mixbag. There's an obvious art style here, mixing childhood drawings with horrifying religious imagery and bathroom wall sketches. It's all pretty part-and-parcel for anyone familiar with Edmund McMillen's art style in games like Time Fcuk or Super Meat Boy. The problem comes down to it's actual presentation. The vanilla version of the game was obviously done with Adobe Flash so it always looked like a low/no budget Newgrounds game. Rebirth was built on a new engine and the pixelated graphics definitely look better then their flash counterparts, in theory. I found that on the PC version the stretched graphics definitly took some time to adjust to, and I can only image the problem is exacerbated on the TV console version. BoI:Rebirth probably fits right at home on a small screen like the PS Vita or the rumored 3DS version, but on larger screens it just looks stretched and distorted, not in the good way.

Chocolate and Vanilla

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BoI now features cutscenes reminiscent of Tool music videos.

The graphics aren't the only difference between the 2011 version of BoI and the recent Rebirth version. Rebirth isn't quite an HD version, isn't quite a sequel. It's more of a standalone expansion pack, that just happens to also be on a different engine. Rebirth adds a wealth of new items and upgrades, new room configurations including multi-screen rooms, local co-op, and gamepad support among other additions. It's not skimpy with the new content, and anyone that enjoyed the original will find more then enough to justify the new price tag. Part of the joy of Rebirth was discovering all the new things added and figuring out how it all works together.

The other part of the joy in BoI is it's sublime gameplay. Like I mentioned, BoI is a strange mix of twin-stick shooter bullet hell mechanics that have you dodging and shoot enemies while avoiding the myriad of things being thrown at you, all while you progress through a ranomized Zelda-like dungeon. It's got perma-death and items to find/buy and secrets hidden everywhere. The moment to moment gameplay of BoI is awesome, especially for fans of shoot-em ups, and the new addition of gamepad support just heightens this. Playing Rebirth with my gamepad was insanely enjoyable, perhaps more so then the Kb+M option that the vanilla BoI was locked with.

Unfortunately BoI is no Spelunky, and for every one good world seed you end up with a dozen terrible ones. It's more balanced then Rogue Legacy, actually dropping health pickups at a decent rate, but there's no denying that the level layout and enemy combinations can occasionally come out as blatantly unfair. It might just be me, but many of the enemies in Rebirth are harder to kill then the original, and I've lost count of how many times I've been blocked in a corner with no way out. It's never game breaking, but it can be frustrating to loose so much progress because of one bad room seed.

Then there's the bosses. Rebirth adds a host of new bosses, but they all have the same strategy: avoid hits, shoot back. There's no real standout bosses in BoI and most of them are only memorable for the way they look. Make no mistake, visually their incredibly memorable, ranging from the bizarre, to the downright twisted to the mortifying. But there's no real heart to them, and a lot of them have similar attack patterns that are to easy to figure out. Most of the fight just boils down to slowly chipping away their health bars as you stay mobile to avoid attacks.

Outta hell

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An actual boss you will have to face.

Binding of Isaac was an interesting, if disturbing game back when it came out. It's unique mix of gameplay mechanics coupled with it's use of biblical mythology and disturbing imagery were enough to hook my back in 2011. Now, three years later I can say that Rebirth is worth the wait, mostly. It's additions and new art style are a welcome sight, and local co-op and gamepad support are almost worth the money alone. It's perhaps unfortunate that so many of the issues from the vanilla game persists, but if your looking for a fun, easy to pick up hard to master game, BoI is definitely not run-of-the-mill.