Prisoner’s Daughter

June 30th, 2023

MOVIE: PRISONER’S DAUGHTER

STARRING: KATE BECKINSALE, BRIAN COX, ERNIE HUDSON, CHRISTOPHER CONVERY, TYSON RITTER

DIRECTED BY: CATHERINE HARDWICKE

AMovieGuy.com’s RATING: 2 STARS (Out of 4)

The career of Kate Beckinsale has always been a mystery to me. I think she is a very good actress and could be great, but she seems to be selective in her projects and often takes roles beneath her. She got her start in Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing, with great promise, but since then she’s mostly known for the Underworld series. It’s not like time is running out for her but her newest film Prisoner’s Daughter is sadly the same result. Beckinsale is quite good at it. It’s the material that fails in the end.

The story is one of redemption, written by Mark Bacci, and directed by Catherine Hardwicke (her second film of 2023 and her second miss). Maxine (Beckinsale) and her son Ezra (Christopher Convery) live in Las Vegas and try to avoid Ezra’s alcoholic musician father Tyler (played by the actual lead singer of The All-American Rejects Tyson Ritter). Maxine works multiple jobs as a server so money is tight and with Ezra’s condition of epilepsy, it has brought on a collection of bullies at school. Needless to say, things at home are bleak, so any support would help them, which arrives in the recent prison release of her very absent father Max (Brian Cox). He’s been granted an early release because he has pancreatic cancer, creating an unexpected moment for a father and his daughter to reconnect after all these years.

From a narrative standpoint, Prisoner’s Daughter is a standard drama, where the relationships of all three characters grow with time. Cox is the wise voice for both Ezra and Maxine. He gives advice to Ezra on how to handle his bullies and introduces him to his one-time boxing friend Hank (Ernie Hudson in a brief role) for fight tips. With Maxine, it becomes a story of a father and daughter healing old wounds. The lingering issues remain that Max was not a good father and abandoned Maxine with her sick mother. Brief flashbacks show that trauma and the reality that healing their wounds isn’t as simple as Max is back in her life.

As a drama, the biggest highlight is that Cox and Beckinsale are always reliable to deliver. Sadly, they are trapped in a story that’s dull. It’s not following a conflicted family reunion such as He Got Game or On Golden Pond, where the external drama is equally as engaging as the internal struggles. In between moments of family healing are scenes where Max struggles with his declining health, drunk dad Tyler embarrasses himself at Ezra’s birthday party, and a fun moment where Max removes his ankle monitor to go swimming at a pool down the block, this, of course, brings mild theater but as the story progresses it becomes predictable and contrived.

The disappointment in Prisoner’s Daughter is two-fold. First, Hardwicke makes a straightforward drama that feels more built for Lifetime, and although it’s leaps and bounds better than Mafia Mamma, it still lacks in dramatic heft. The second disappointment is that it’s another miss for Beckinsale. The actress is hopefully jumping back into more dramatic roles, flexing her skills that we know can be great, but it’s not going to happen in Prisoner’s Daughter. This movie can be kept behind bars.

PRISONER’S DAUGHTER IS PLAYING IN SELECT THEATERS ON FRIDAY JUNE 30TH, 2023.

2 STARS

Written by: Leo Brady
leo@amovieguy.com