Here’s what “Prisoner’s Daughter” is: It’s a classic, written-directed-starred-in-by-Clint-Eastwood type vehicle, except with no Clint.
Titular prisoner Max (Brian Cox) is a former boxer and current prison AA sponsor with a life sentence and a recent terminal cancer diagnosis. With only months to live, he’s given the opportunity for a humanitarian, house-arrest release, under one condition—Max is to stay with estranged daughter Maxine (Kate Beckinsale), a single mother desperately trying to make ends meet in the Las Vegas burbs.
Reparations
The prisoner does his level best to repair his broken relationship with the prisoner’s daughter, but Maxine wants nothing to do with Max, and isn’t even sympathetic to his condition. He was a very bad dad.She is, however, drowning in debt, and just lost her waitress job after Tyler (Tyson Ritter), her idiot ex (as well as her son’s father) showed up at her job, got in an altercation, and assaulted her manager. Maxine’s highly precocious 12-year-old son Ezra (Christopher Convery) needs expensive epilepsy medication. And Max happens to have some money saved.
And so, facing all that, Maxine allows dad back in the house—the same house she grew up in, with a double-whammy history of two alcoholic parents, where every cigarette burn-mark and stain on the rug has a violent history.
Make a Man Out of Him
It’s not a cliché; just archetypal: The vulnerable (but hilariously mouthy) school-bullied kid in need of a father-figure is endlessly satisfying—especially when the father-figure is a formerly very dangerous man.
Scanty But Rather Satisfying
It’s the three main performances of mom, grandad, and grandson that save this scanty script. Brian Cox (Uncle Argyle in “Braveheart”), in the Eastwood-y role of Max, is on more of a path of redemption and moral upgrading than is normally the case for these type of vengence-providing roles. The more fun choice would have been to allow him to let the old monster out more vehemently; or to at least let it glower up more menacingly from the bottom of its dungeon lair, but who can argue with someone attempting an about-face from a violent life of crime?
The only reason to watch “Prisoner’s Daughter,” though, is Kate Beckinsale, here doing some of the finest work of her career. This is the level of film many actors are tempted to just “phone in” their performances for, but Beckinsale goes all out. It’s tangible that she put in the character prep-work: You believe she’s from Vegas, has years of diner waitressing experience, strip-club experience, and has spent decades ruing her stereotypical youthful mess-up of being the pretty girl who fell for the rock musician bad-boy and would love nothing more than a complete do-over with her choices.
She’s got an extremely natural and believable mother-son vibe going with the delightful Christopher Convery and can spin on a dime when berating dad with blistering diatribes about why, no matter how contrite he is now, he can’t erase the endless era of alcoholic violence and emotional neglect she had to endure.
A compelling watch. This is director Catherine Hardwicke, after all, returning to form, who made the independent gems “Lords of Dogtown” and “Thirteen,” before catching the wave of big commercial projects “Twilight” and “Red Riding Hood.”
