Hostage Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)March 10th, 2005
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Shortly after my screening of Hostage, a representative of the film's distributor came a-callin', hungry for quotes to use in an ad campaign. I chewed on it for a second or two, and said, "I think I can honestly state that Hostage is the best work Bruce Willis has done in years." This, of course, is more of a backhanded criticism of Willis's 21st century ouvrage (at least until Sin City hits screens). But I also uttered that fairly surprising sentence with my tongue placed relatively far from my cheek, as well, since Willis showed enough spark in a couple of scenes to make audiences forget about him selling what was left of his soul for that quick paycheck called The Whole Ten Yards.
Hostage's eye-catching credits lead into one of those scenes, in which we're given a little background into Willis's Jeff Talley, a Los Angeles hostage negotiator with a flower-print shirt, long hair, scraggly salt-n-pepa beard, and enough stones to remain horizontal for most of the bartering surrounding a domestic disturbance-turned-hostage situation (in fact, he reminded me a lot of another crazy, bearded genius with the same initials - Smile!). The scene goes down badly, though, with Talley's hands literally covered in the blood of the innocent people he was unable to save. Oh, I should mention this: If you don't like bad movie clichés, Hostage is the wrong film for
you.
One year later, Talley is the chief of police in small-town Bristo Camino, which I think might be somehow related to Eric Forman's car (Willis-->Demi-->Kelso-->Eric?). Aside from having a family who hates him, Talley is loving life, particularly his less stressful job. Less stressful, that is, until three delinquents decide to pull off a smash-and-grab so they can make off with a luxury SUV. You know, because the kids love SUVs. The smashing and grabbing doesn't go well, and the three teens find themselves trapped in a mansion whose security system has locked down the entire property. The problem becomes full-blown when a cop responding to the silent alarm is shot and killed.
So Talley is back in the shit, but he doesn't yet realize how deep he's wading in the crapulence. There is much more to Hostage's plot, but it's all too silly to talk about here. Instead, let's discuss how one of the kidnapping victims slides through the mansion's ventilation ducts like a greased Groundskeeper Willie. Or we could shoot the breeze about the ringleader of the crime syndicate triptych (Six Feet Under's Ben Foster) transmogrifying himself from a dumb stoner with a denim jacket to an indestructible monster not typically found outside the horror genre.
If there's one thing I can say about Hostage, it's that director Florent Emilio Siri loves him some slow-motion. If Hostage was played at normal speed, I think it might cut the running time to about 18 minutes. This is strange because Siri's previous directorial credits are Splinter Cell videogames. I've played Splinter Cell, and I don't remember any slo-mo at all. For this, maybe we should look to screenwriter Doug Richardson, the powerhouse behind the non-award-winning comedy Welcome to Mooseport. His adaptation (or adaption, if you're Adam Sandler) of Robert Crais's novel makes Hostage every bit as riveting as The Negotiator, which wasn't at all riveting.
1:42 - R for strong graphic violence, language and some drug use
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