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

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 #9, #6, and #5 positions, respectively, during the last three days. The film has also been gaining traction in Bolivia and Honduras lately. The latter has Prisoners at #12 at the time of writing (November 4), and it was at #18 in Bolivia on November 3.

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'Prisoners' Is Similar to 'Mystic River' Meets 'Zodiac'

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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.