A guy sent me a script of Aaron Guzikowski‘s Prisoners, which is looking like another Christian Bale-Mark Wahlberg pairing. (Their first co-venture will be in David O. Russell‘s The Fighter.) The rumor mill says Bryan Singer, whose once-formidable rep has been diminished by Valkyrie and who naturally needs to restore face, is apparently considering a shot at directing.

Prisoners is a kidnapped-kids thriller — Taken meets Gone Baby Gone meets Se7en meets the ravenous hunger of producers and distributors looking for the next big thing. It’s about monsters in our midst in at least two senses of that term, and is very tightly assembled. Wahlberg will play Keller, a blue-collar dad turned vigilante pursuer when his daughter and a neighbor’s child disappear on the night of a Thanksgiving celebration. I’m given to understand that Bale will play Loki, a hotshot detective assigned to the case. It’s set in the Boston area.

The guy who sent it to me called it “a complete page turner…I haven’t read something so original or twisted in quite some time…the comparisons to Se7en are understandable…it’s a hell of a script…if Singer ends up directing as rumored, this thing could really be something special.” I’ve read about 50 or 60 pages worth this morning. It’s a taut and muscular genre piece but so far it’s given me a little too much deja vu. It’ll almost certainly satisfy along the lines of other thrillers in this vein unless the director (Singer or whomever) screws it up big-time.