Forget ‘Sicario,’ Denis Villeneuve’s 10/10 Crime Thriller Officially Takes Over Apple TV

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Everybody loves a good action-packed revenge thriller. One Mile: Chapter One and One Mile: Chapter 2, for example, despite receiving poor-to-moderate reviews from both critics and audiences, were recently trending at the top on Paramount+. Historically, films like Taken have always performed well. One such film from 2013, starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal, is now trending on Apple TV and the Apple TV Store.

The plot follows Keller Dover (Jackman). His daughter and her friend go missing and he takes matters into his own hands as the police pursue multiple leads and the pressure mounts. Detective Loki (Gyllenhaal), on the other hand, arrests Alex Jones (Paul Dano), a developmentally disabled man driving the RV, and due to a lack of physical evidence, Loki is forced to release him. This leads to a full-on kidnapping by Jackman to find his daughter. In fact, there’s a famous scene where his character punches through the wall in an improvised take while confronting suspects, and his co-stars got scared of how intense that unplanned punch was.

The film’s title is Prisoners, and it’s currently trending in the U.S. on the overall Apple TV Top 10 Movies chart. The film has been at , , and positions, respectively, during the last three days. The film has also been gaining traction in Bolivia and Honduras lately. The latter has Prisoners at at the time of writing (November 4), and it was at in Bolivia on November 3.

Four criminal masterminds. One of them was always going to be yours.
Here is who comes for you, why they picked you out of everyone available, and what they want from
the encounter.

Your nemesis does not want to beat you. He wants to know you
completely, and he is patient enough to wait for it. The frightening part is how good the
conversation is.

• Lecter is the most dangerous kind of opponent: the one who finds you interesting. He
  never raises his voice, because he has never needed to.
• You keep a great deal to yourself and you are careful about what you show. That reserve
  is exactly the door he would knock on.
• The films understood something other thrillers missed. The horror is not the violence.
  It is being perfectly understood by the wrong person.
• He would be unfailingly polite about all of it. That is the worst part.

Your nemesis is not after money, territory or revenge. He is
after a demonstration, and you are the person he has chosen to prove his point on.

• The Joker only picks opponents who believe in something. Your decency is not a defence
  against him. It is the entire reason he showed up.
• He has no plan you can predict and nothing you can take away, which removes every tool
  you would normally reach for.
• His whole argument is that you are one bad day away from being him, and you would spend
  the rest of your life proving him wrong.
• He would call it a magic trick. You would call it the worst night of your life.

Your nemesis respects you, which sounds flattering until you work
out what it means. He chose you because nobody else was worth his time.

• Moriarty is the original criminal mastermind, the template every later one borrows from:
  a mind the equal of the hero’s, pointed the wrong way.
• You enjoy being the cleverest person in the room. He is counting on exactly that, and he
  has already built the room.
• This is the rare nemesis who would be genuinely disappointed if you lost badly. He needs
  the game to be worth playing.
• It ends the way these things always end. Two people, one problem, and only one way down.

Your nemesis has no personal interest in you whatsoever, and that
is precisely what makes him unsurvivable. You are not a rival. You are a stop on the way.

• Chigurh does not negotiate, gloat or explain. He arrives, he asks one question, and the
  answer was decided long before you opened your mouth.
• You trust yourself to handle things. He is the one problem in the world that has no
  interest in how capable you are.
• No Country for Old Men rewrote the screen villain by removing the thing audiences
  quietly rely on: the sense that talking might work.
• Call it. He will wait.

‘Prisoners’ Is Similar to ‘Mystic River’ Meets ‘Zodiac’

• Image via Summit Entertainment

• Image via Warner Bros.

• Image via Summit Entertainment

• Image via Summit Entertainment

Directed by Dune franchise and Sicario filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, Prisoners sits somewhere between the emotional devastation of Mystic River and the procedural obsession of Zodiac. For instance, like Mystic River, it turns a missing-child case into something uglier than a conventional mystery, forcing parents, suspects, and investigators into morally compromised decisions shaped by grief and rage. It’s kinda like Taken too but Prisoners is raw-er.

Meanwhile, Detective Loki’s increasingly obsessive hunt for patterns, hidden connections, and overlooked evidence gives the film a Zodiac-like investigative pull. Every clue seems capable of opening another dead end. The result is a thriller where Keller’s desperation and Loki’s methodical pursuit are equally consuming.

Prisoners is available to stream on Apple TV in the U.S. and currently trending. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

Prisoners