Pun Salad

For those of us who have been seeing Hugh Jackman mostly as Wolverine, and need a reminder that he's a pretty good actor, this movie should do the trick. Better: it's a finely wrought whodunit mystery, something that seemed moviemakers had all but forgotten how to do.

Some opening scenes paint Mr. Jackman's character, "Keller Dover", as a manly man, self-reliant, but teetering on the financial edge. Things rapidly go downhill when he and his family attend Thanksgiving dinner with friends; after the meal, the families' young daughters go outside unattended, and go missing. The only clue is an RV that was seen hanging around the area shortly before. That's traced back to a very odd duck, young Alex Jones (played by Paul Dano). Alex says things that convince Dover that he knows where the girls are. But the cops (led by Jake Gyllenhaal as "Detective Loki") are not convinced, and Alex goes free.

So what's a manly man to do? Obviously: abduct and torture Alex in order to find out the whereabouts of his daughter. Duh! Dover continues down this soul-destroying path while Loki continues his frustrating search for clues.

This may be an uncomfortable movie for parents to watch; it was for me, anyhow. Child abduction is right up there in the top five terrors that moms and dads contemplate every time a kid doesn't appear when and where they expect. Mr. Jackman's character doesn't handle it well, but any father can imagine himself going right down that same road.