Yet another drama designed to be emotional without actually doing the heavy lifting to get us invested, Prisoner's Daughter takes the easy way out at every turn, mistaking its use of capital-I Issues and dramatic plot points for substantial writing. This doesn't mean that the film itself isn't still watchable and competently performed (by a typically strong Brian Cox, but especially by Kate Beckinsale); it just fails to make a statement about any of its disparate parts mashed together. At the end of the day, it feels as if the film doesn't have enough faith in the already complex and difficult relationship at its center, so it attempts to dress it up with prison, cancer, drug addicts, and epilepsy—which only cheapens what's already there.

Any scene where Beckinsale and Cox get to share time together and really just act without any distractions is time well spent. The dynamic between Maxine and Max is ultimately kept too simple in the long run, but in individual scenes you can tell that the two actors are doing their darnedest to create a complicated dynamic between their characters. Maxine keeps her father at arm's length out of spite for being abandoned, but also out of shame for not being much better as a parent (at least from her perspective). Meanwhile, Max wants to do whatever he can to help given his fatal diagnosis, but knows he has no right to intrude upon his daughter's life, having accepted all the pain he's caused. It's a good relationship that deserves a better movie.