( EW.com ) -- In movies like 1974 's `` Death Wish , '' where Charles Bronson played a walking statue of stoic wrath , vigilante justice is mean , nasty and also good , clean fun . But then there 's the kind of movie , like Sam Peckinpah 's `` Straw Dogs , '' that salutes lone-wolf vengeance while also making you feel the spiritual toll it takes — a breed of thriller that 's exciting , cathartic and powerfully disturbing . `` Prisoners '' is that kind of movie . It 's rooted in 40 years of Hollywood revenge films , yet it also breaks audacious new ground . The film stars Hugh Jackman as Keller Dover , a brawny survivalist who is also a gentle-voiced suburban dad . On a rainy Thanksgiving afternoon , Keller brings his wife ( Mario Bello ) and kids over to the home of neighborhood friends ( Terrence Howard and Viola Davis ) . The two families eat , drink and joke around , and nothing too remarkable happens — until everyone realizes that Keller 's little daughter , Anna ( Erin Gerasimovich ) , has left the house and disappeared , along with the other family 's daughter , Joy ( Kyla Drew Simmons ) . EW : Fall movies we ca n't wait to see . A search turns up nothing , but later that night , the police find a pale , mostly mute young creep ( Paul Dano ) in smudged aviator frames and oily long hair hanging around in his skeevy RV camper — the same vehicle that the girls were trying to crawl up the ladder of that afternoon . The cops arrest this damaged-looking sad sack , interrogate him , and find no evidence . So they let him go . But Keller , after an encounter with the suspect outside the police station , is convinced that he 's guilty . So he takes action . He kidnaps the creep , brings him to an abandoned apartment building , and beats him to a bloody pulp , over and over again . He threatens to kill the young man unless he confesses . But the suspect/victim says nothing . If he is , in fact , innocent , then what Keller is doing is an unholy atrocity . But what if he 's guilty ? Are Keller 's one-man torture-squad tactics justified then ? And what if many people ( along with the law ) would declare that no , those tactics are still not justified ? What should Keller do , given that every bone in his body is telling him that this is the only way he 'll ever see his daughter again ? What if every bone in his body is right ? `` Prisoners , '' directed by Denis Villeneuve ( `` Incendies '' ) from a script by Aaron Guzikowski , is no shallow payback thriller . It 's a dazzingly potent , ambitious and complex movie , a film that forces you to ask questions that have no easy answers . What I 've described is merely the film 's first act . There are a great many twists and turns — both suspenseful and thematic — to come . Yet at the heart of `` Prisoners '' is something primitive and elemental and gripping , an obsession with torture , morality and the impotence of the justice system that speaks to our time as intensely ( and maybe controversially ) as the pitch-dark vigilante thrillers of the '70s once spoke to theirs . EW 's Jess Cagle talks porn sets with Hugh Jackman . Jackman , in a staggering performance that 's unlike anything he has done before , acts with an unbridled rage , and he invests every snarl and rasp of that anger with meaning . Keller knows that in missing-child cases , each day the victim does n't turn up radically increases the chances that she never will , and so his fury , even at its craziest , comes off as a desperate display of committed action . Haunted by what might be happening to his daughter , he has — at least in his own mind — transcended the law , yet that leaves him with nothing to believe in but himself , and Jackman takes us on every step of that brave , terrible journey . Each of the film 's major performances is powerful . As the cop heading up the investigation , Jake Gyllenhaal has a moody danger that all but redefines him as an actor ( for the first time , he does n't seem like too nice a guy ) , and Melissa Leo , as the suspect 's mother , unnerves you with the sinister banality of her homepsun Middle American quirkiness . She 's the nightmare mom next door . In its treatment of torture as a means to an end , `` Prisoners '' is very much a post- '' Zero Dark Thirty '' movie , even if the sin at its heart is child abduction rather than terrorism . Keller 's remorseless treatment of his suspect echoes America 's treatment of its captives at Abu Ghraib and other hidden locales after 9/11 . Only this time it 's personal : a desperate father out to save his daughter . `` Prisoners '' takes the mythic simplicity of the vigilante film and adds arresting layers of ambiguity . Watching the movie , we behold Keller 's actions and feel that they may be horribly unjustified — a daring place for a film to put its hero — and we also behold his actions and feel that they may be what true morality demands . t 's a sign of the film 's power that either scenario could turn out to be true , and that each one is just as scary . Grade : A . See the original story at EW.com . CLICK HERE to Try 2 RISK FREE issues of Entertainment Weekly . © 2011 Entertainment Weekly and Time Inc. All rights reserved .
` ` ' '' stars Hugh Jackman and Jake Roberts . It 's rooted in Hollywood horror films but breaks new ground . Dark and complex , the film earns an ` ` A ''