Prisoner’s Daughter
“Prisoner’s Daughter” wants to be both heart-warming and challenging as a daughter is faced with having her father in her life after 12 years in prison. It’s honestly neither, and none of the actors- be they Kate Beckinsale or Brian Cox of Ernie Hudson- can make me feel like this is not going through the motions. It’s not quite as sappy as your average “after school special” TV movie, but it’s not far off.
Whatever edge as a storytelling Catherine Hardwicke had in her early career is basically gone here. I thought she got fun work out of Toni Collette and Monica Bellucci in “Mafia Mamma” earlier this year, but the filmmaker behind “Thirteen” doesn’t feel at home with this story of a struggling single mother who, out of the blue, hears from her father, and he is allowed to leave jail and stay with her and her son while he dies from pancreatic cancer. How is Bryan Cox, of all actors, unable to give this weight? I think it’s because the screenplay by Mark Bacci is very predictable and hits every beat you expect it to hit along the way.
Maxine (Beckinsale’s character) is a mother with issues she has to deal with. Her son, Ezra (Christopher Convery) is epileptic and has bullies at school he’s struggling with. Her ex- Ezra’s father- is a druggie who wants to see Ezra, but is unable to control his emotions in a natural human way. And she’s working menial jobs that don’t really pay the bills. Max, her father, calling her out of the blue to see if he can live with her and Ezra in his final days isn’t intended to be a way for him to catch up- for her, he can provide some financial help they need. But wouldn’t you know it? Things get better with Max around, although his past- and future- are always not far from the action.
I’m not sure whether it’s the moments where “Prisoner’s Daughter” wants to be sentimental or the ones where it wants to be hard-hitting are more annoying. Neither of them work; the moment elements in the film are introduced, we can guess where they are doing to lead, and while the actors each have brief moments where we feel like they’re playing a real person, it’s ultimately not enough to make this engaging on anything other than a surface-level sense of drama. I do think Cox is probably the standout, and I like his work with Ernie Hudson as an old friend who runs a boxing gym in their brief moments. Beckinsale is best when dealing with Tyson Ritter as Tyler- Ezra’s father- and Convery has moments with both Cox and Beckinsale that are good, but the whole thing just falls flat, and is completely forgettable.
