What the critics are saying: ‘Prisoners’

TORONTO — The new drama Prisoners has an impressive cast — including Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Terrence Howard and Viola Davis — as well as Quebec director Denis Villeneuve (Incendies) at the helm.

The movie about the hunt for two missing girls generated plenty of buzz when it was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival this month.

Does Prisoners live up the hype? Here’s a look at what some of the critics are saying:

Richard Corliss at TIME was disappointed.

“It’s just not very good. In fact, it’s worse than not-very-good; it’s could’ve-been-really-good-and-isn’t,” he wrote.

Corliss said Prisoners is “an hour longer than it ought to be” thanks to “the actors repeating essential lines of dialogue two or three times.”

He added: “This is one of those films that prod the viewer to dream of storming the editing room and trying to carve an excellent thriller out of a meandering rough cut.”

WATCH: The Morning Show chats with the stars of Prisoners

At the San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Hartlaub opined that Prisoners is a failure “only if you dwell on what might have been.”

“How audiences feel about the film depends on their level of pessimism,” he wrote. “Was a great movie ruined by poor story choices? Or did the excellent filmmaking rescue the poorly executed finish?”

Katherine Monk, a reviewer for Postmedia, said the movie is “filled with black holes, leaps and gaps, nearly impossible twists that test the strength of the whole story.”

She wrote: “Connections that may feel obvious to the vigilant viewer take a long time to play out onscreen, which leads to more viewer frustration and a sense we may be smarter than the muscle-bound heroes.”

But, Monk wrote, Prisoners does not feel derivative thanks to Villeneuve.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said some might write off the movie as shameless exploitation but he found it to be “so artfully shaped and forcefully developed that objections fade” — again, a credit to director.

“Villeneuve takes his unflashy time building character and revealing troubled psyches in the most unlikely of places,” wrote Travers. “His work with the exemplary actors results in a film of startling impact, packed with twists you don’t see coming. You can’t shake it.”

At the New York Times, critic A.O. Scott seemed to agree.

“Prisoners is, among other things, a satisfying whodunit, with artfully deposited clues and twists that are surprising without entirely undermining the film’s naturalistic credibility,” wrote Scott. “But Mr. Villeneuve … is more invested in mood and meaning than in plot.”

He concluded: “By the end, you may be a little worn out, and perhaps also slightly let down by the fussily clever revelations that wrap up the story, but in the meantime, you are a willing captive, unable tell the difference between dread and delight.”

Scott Mendelson of Forbes does not concur, writing that Prisoners “isn’t nearly as insightful or as clever as it thinks it is.”

“Upon reflection one will realize how much of its 150-minute running time was spent on tangents, red herrings, and seemingly major narrative beats that lack a connective pay-off,” he wrote. “The film only gets sillier when pretty much every major character starts acting like an idiot by the end.”

Mendelson added: “Prisoners goes out of its way to position itself as a high-toned morality play as opposed to a down-and-dirty thriller, while arguably failing at both in the process.”

Norm Wilner of NOW also took issue with the movie’s running time.

“There’s just no reason this movie needed to be two and a half hours long,” he wrote.

Equally unimpressed was Mara Reinstein of US Weekly.

“If you’re going to sit through a 153-minute-long mystery that centers on kidnapped children, it had better be great. And enthralling. With rich characters,” she wrote. “This outing underwhelms on all accounts.

“The script is so busy trying to trip up audiences with red herrings that for a brief stretch, even Gyllenhaal seems suspicious just because he has a smattering of eclectic tattoos. Meanwhile, the most straightforward clues, obvious to anyone who’s ever seen a single episode of Law & Order, go unpursued. Just as well: The third-act twist is an unsettling, unsatisfying downer (and isn’t nearly as clever as it thinks it is.)”