You would think by now if terrorists and hostage takers would have learned one thing, it would be that Bruce Willis doesn't take crap from anyone and definitely doesn't negotiate with terrorists. The same applies when Willis plays Officer Jeff Tally, a former LAPD negotiator who moves to an upscale suburban area after he blames himself for a hostage negotiation gone wrong. Soon Tally finds his old ghosts coming back to haunt him as a wealthy family is taken hostage by 3 teenagers including a major psychopath named Mars. However the teens don't know that the father of the family is an accountantÂť for a west coast kingpin who doesn't want the evidence in the house to get to the police. At this point the story takes a bigger turn and Tally is forced to take some desperate measures to save not only the wealthy family, but also his own.
Willis gave a pretty good performance, one of the better ones I've seen from him as of late. Ben Foster, who plays Mars, also gives a really nice performance and really gave realness to the character and definitely played the psycho part as well as anyone could. Other than that there wasn't anything standout for performances.
The movie kept me interested almost throughout as the actual hostage taking process starts off pretty early in the movie and keeps the tempo up after that. Although by the end it seemed like they were in that house forever. Doesn't the sun ever come up?
There isn't anything really wrong with the movie, but it's pretty typical. It really seems to draw from a lot of other movies and Hollywood cliches. If you like thrillers this movie is for you, the action and pace will keep you close to the edge of your seat and might be worth a trip to the theaters. However I think you could probably wait and it would definitely sound excellent on a home theater system. Not bad, just not extraordinary.
"Hostage" opens March 11, 2005 and is rated R. Drama, Thriller. Directed by Florent Emilio Siri. Written by Robert Crais, Doug Richardson. Starring Ben Foster, Bruce Willis, Kevin Pollack.
