Everything seems to be going wrong for Maxine (Kate Beckinsale) at the start of Prisoner’s Daughter. She’s hit the delinquency period on her rent. Her son Ezra (Christopher Convery) is nearly kicked out of school for being on the receiving end of a bully’s fists. Her ex-husband Tyler (Tyson Ritter) has come back into her life, demanding to see his son while promising nothing in return. The deadbeat picks a fight with her boss, which results in her losing her job and main source of income. There isn’t much more that Maxine can take, and the smallest of credit can be given to screenwriter Mark Bacci that he doesn’t load up the scenarios even further, at least until a dreadfully inevitable final act, in order to make these people suffer even more.
That is about all the credit one can give this pat, utterly familiar domestic drama, though. Nothing about director Catherine Hardwicke’s film has anything to say about these characters or their situations that we haven’t seen before in better, more nuanced dramas about families meeting hard times with few obvious paths of redemption. What could have worked about this treatment was some sense of honesty or truth, but neither Maxine nor almost anyone else here is developed enough beyond some broad strokes and some general specifics (the phrase is an oxymoron, but also perfect to describe the experience of learning about these characters).
The exception to that rule would be Maxine’s father and namesake Max (Brian Cox), who has been serving a stint in prison for some truly awful crimes (hinted at more than outright discussed, but let’s just say he received compensation for them) unworthy of anyone’s forgiveness. The state has decided, though, that his 12 years of apparently good behavior and a negative prognosis of pancreatic is just enough to extend a branch of kindness. He can live out the rest of his days with his next of kin, as long as that person signs off on the arrangement. At first, Maxine is willing to go as far as allowing him house room in exchange for paying rent and keeping quiet about his familial ties. She needs the money; he needs the roof.
Bacci’s screenplay and Cox’ performance do an adequate job of convincing us that Max really has changed, but the movie also does an inconsistent job of convincing us that he deserves any special treatment. He is gruff and generally distant, seemingly by personal choice, and whatever goodwill he is able to build up for himself requires tapping into his dangerous past, whether that be teaching Ezra to be in a defensive posture at all times with his bullies (which inevitably leads to more trouble, on multiple occasions) or calling in a “favor” with an old pal in organized crime to have some construction done. Is he using this opportunity to better his relationships with Maxine and Ezra, or is it just selfishness in the face of certain death?
The tortured final act of the movie, which unnecessarily turns Tyler into an over-the-top threat to the newly reformed relationship, offers answers with succinctness but total, pervasive dishonesty. No one is quite “good” in Prisoner’s Daughter except the innocent kid caught in the middle of everything, which is why the bizarre act of drawing more or less a literal line between “good” and “bad” comes off as abject nonsense. In short, the movie is bunk.
Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment
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