Hostage Movie Review:


Bruce Willis is back. Where has this action hero been?

Well it has been 10 years since Bruce Willis concluded the “Die Hard” trilogy with 1995’s “Die Hard: With a Vengeance” and its been 5 years since Bruce Willis has had a certified hit with 2000’s “Unbreakable”. But this actor is a survivor and it looks like he may be back with a vengeance.

With six films slated to come out in the next year in a half, Willis is making a good run at it.

Hostage opens with Willis playing hostage negotiator Jeff Talley, who seems to be at his wits end after his latest crisis goes utterly sour. The eventual outcome sends Talley packing and he ends up in an off-the-beaten-path police station where nothing really happens except for putting a strain on his marriage.

During one quiet afternoon, three teenage delinquents spot a family at a convenience store and marvel at their new SUV. The delinquents follow the family home and plot out their home invasion with the goal of stealing the SUV. They picked the wrong home and the wrong day for such a spree.

As the tension escalates, Talley must face his demons and desperately try to save the family from these criminals. Can he do it before he comes unglued? What is the secret buried within the house?

Willis is utterly unbelievable in his tour-de-force performance as Jeff Talley. There are echoes of what Willis was able to do with his infamous character John McClane from Die Hard. But Willis has always been great at being the every-day guy who now has to be the hero. It was that magic that made “Die Hard” such a great film and it also rings true here in this performance.

I was also really impressed with Ben Foster, who plays Mars, the most psychotic of the delinquents. This kid oozes insanity and is brilliant. The kid reminded me a lot a young Brad Dourif, who was always the embodiment of the unhinged psychotic to me. Dourif has had a brilliant career being this kind of character so may Foster.

Another probably surprising thing about this film is that it’s directed by videogame director Florent Siri, who conceived the past two Splinter Cell games. The claustrophobia and styled action sequences that Siri is able to conceive in the film are so close to what he was able to create in the video game series. I was also thoroughly impressed with the visuals in the film’s opening credits. It is an awesome sequence.

The film’s screenwriter, Doug Richardson is a seasoned action writer with writing credits for such films as “Die Hard 2”, “Bad Boys” and “Money Train”. Richardson’s attention to detail with his script and high tension really comes alive with Siri’s slick and dark direction.

I did find a couple things that bugged me about the film. I didn’t like the film’s musical score. I felt that in a lot of sequences the music drowned out the tension and didn’t fit some scenes. I also felt that the film went for the gore when the tension started to wean.

The film still is a first class action piece. It has all the thrills and tension that makes this kind of film a joy to watch. Bruce Willis is back and would someone please sign this Florent Siri to another project ASAP.

So Says the Soothsayer.



Dean Kish

After his last case went disastrously wrong, former Los Angeles S.W.A.T. hostage negotiator Jeff Talley (Willis) transferred to Bristo Camino, a small quiet town away from the big city to put his past behind him. When a house robbery goes terribly wrong and three teenagers are forced into taking the owner Walter Smith (Pollak) and his young son and daughter hostage, Talley’s skills are called into action again but this time there is a lot more on the line. His own wife and daughter have been kidnapped by an unknown fraction that wants something that is in the house where the hostages are been kept. Jeff Talley now has to resolve this situation as quickly as possible but will he sacrifice another family to save his own?

After enjoying huge success in the late 80s and 90s, Bruce Willis has struggled to make an impact in the new millennium but can ‘Hostage’ bring his die-hard fans back to the box office?

Based on the best selling novel by Robert Crais, Hostage could have so easily been the premise for ‘Die Hard 4’ but John McClane who have been far to gung-ho for this story. Instead we have Willis playing a guilt-ridden ex-hostage negotiator who is put in an impossible position were he might have to sacrifice another family to save his own. This is an intriguing movie hypothesis but the problem is that it isn’t overly well executed.

Borrowing elements from numerous different movies such as ‘Panic Room’ and Willis’s own Die Hard movies, this film feels more like a disjointed amalgamation than a standout movie on its own. The film has two threat elements. The first is to the family inside the house. They are confronted by the psychologically unstable Mars, a gun happy troubled teenager on the verge of killing anything that moves or threatens him. This character is your usual clichéd teenage maniac, who comes from a violent upbringing and has no regard for life. On the outside you have the men in the masks. These are agents working for the businessmen who want the item in Walter Smith’s house and will take extreme measures to get it. Where the threat against Talley works, the excessiveness of the Mars character in the house spoils the flow of the movie. He is a distraction from Talley’s plight of getting into the house and retrieving the item and far too over the top to be believeable.

The film isn’t helped by some of the performances. Willis himself isn’t bad, giving one of his better action performances of late. This is a role that asks abit more of him than usual and in most parts he delivers, showing fear and anger in the right amounts. It is the character itself that is very underwritten and two-dimensional, making him a tad too clichéd to be believeable. Also the comedy beard and hairstyle Willis has in the opening scene will put you off the character for the rest of the movie anyway. Kevin Pollak is sadly wasted as Walter Smith, spending most of the film unconscious. Jimmy Bennett who plays little Tommy Smith is just another Kevin from ‘Home Alone’. Michelle Horn spends most of the film screaming as the annoying Jennifer Smith. Jonathan Tucker is OK as Dennis Kelly, the leader of the teenage gang and Ben Foster is far too over the top as Mars but he deserves more as he is a good actor.

‘Hostage’ is an amalgamation of too many ideas and not one really good one. While some of the set sequences are good, the narrative and the characters suffer from not enough development or been far too clichéd. There just isn’t enough here to keep you captivated.

Jamie Kelwick

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