Release Date: March 11, 2005
Starring: Bruce Willis, Ben Foster, Kevin Pollak, Jimmy Bennet, Jonathan Tucker, Marshall Allman, Michelle Horn, Rumer Willis
Directed by: Florent Emilio Siri
Written by: Doug Richardson
Distributed by: Miramax Films
MPAA Rating: R (graphic violence, language)
After the terror attacks of 2001, Bruce Willis vowed to never again make one of his trademark terrorist action films. Apparently four years was enough time for that sentiment to wear off, as he’s now the star of the generically titled actioner Hostage. Luckily for him, though, the film is not as monotonous and formulaic as the poster or title might suggest. In fact, it puts a nice twist on the hostage-thriller subgenre, and Willis himself does well to carry it. Unfortunately, it also fails at the overall story, trying to be more than it really is, with more subplots than it can handle and a collection of plot holes you usually find in second-rate action movies.
Willis plays Jeff Talley, a shell-shocked hostage negotiator who has moved to the suburbs of Los Angeles, where he’s taken the much less stressful job of small-town police chief. One day a situation develops at a secluded mansion owned by Walter Smith (Kevin Pollak), a family man who has made a secret living as a money launderer for the mob. Three teens (Jonathan Tucker, Marshall Allman, Ben Foster) have broken into the house to steal his car, and things take a turn for the worse when one of them (Foster) kills a curious police officer who happens upon the scene. The leader of the trio, Dennis (Tucker), knocks Smith unconscious and ties up his daughter (Michelle Horn) and son (Jimmy Bennett). It has officially become a hostage situation, and Talley arrives on the scene.
To make matters terribly worse, one of the teens, named Mars (Foster), is emotionally unstable and is fixing to cause more trouble than his friends are intending. And it also turns out that the ordeal has made Mr. Smith very late for an illegal drop-off, and now the mob is threatening Talley to end the takeover and get their precious goods before the night is over, or they’ll kill Talley’s own wife and daughter (who is played by Willis’s real-life daughter, Rumar Willis).
This is the refreshing twist the story takes, because now Willis is up against two formidable foes -- the teens inside the house and the mob bosses outside it -- and he must rescue hostages from both without telling any of the other law enforcement members about his own family. It’s a slightly more complicated version of Die Hard, but with far less interesting characters. Still, Hostage does a good job keeping our interest and, at least until the last half, avoids making the story unbelievable and full of holes.
Through the first two acts or so, director Florent Emilio Siri (a former video game designer) has us hooked. The situation with the three teens is believable and suspenseful because of its randomness (they only hit the house because Smith’s daughter flipped them off earlier, and they want to show her who’s boss). And even though it’s a little cliché, it’s also interesting to watch Willis’s character start in the humble position of suburban police chief and transform himself back into the hardened hostage negotiator he started out as. We’re hanging on what he says and does, and it’s truly an exciting twist when the mob men, all dressed in black masks, calmly and precisely raise the level of tension with their own terms.
However, this seemingly taut and well-constructed plot starts to unravel when it’s forced to live up to itself in the latter half of the film. Screenwriter Doug Richardson skims over dramatic points that need extra time to develop, like the connection of Talley to his family and the reasons Foster’s character, Mars, is a psychopath. We hardly see Talley with his family, and therefore have little of the same emotional connection he has to them. Plus, they’re established as estranged family members who are losing respect for Talley, which is yet another hardly necessary subplot that is barely touched on.
Also, although it’s partially explained why Mars is a lunatic, it’s not enough to hide his contrived purpose in the story. Really, there’s no reason why all of the boys together couldn’t have been a collective group of psychos, which probably would have made the story more efficient and the climax more credible. But writer Richardson is intent on adding yet another subplot with the Mars angle and it only crowds the story more, subsequently cheapening it instead of enhancing it. (To his credit, though, Foster does a good job at playing this part.)
The lesson is: If certain plot points aren’t going to be developed well enough, they shouldn’t be added at all. Granted, this type of writing is to be expected from your typical actioner, but from the beginning Hostage strives to be something more. It was on its way to being a dramatic and genuinely exciting conflict between two groups of villains, with a tough and likable cop in the middle. But what we get in the end is only a hint of that, and it’s really only a little better than your run-of-the-mill action films.
-- Andy Zientek (zfilm@earthlink.net)