DVD: Hostage
Hostage, based on the novel of the same name by Robert Crais, is true to the book in that it is fast-paced, suspenseful, and inventive. It's easy to follow the pattern in some of these suspense thrillers, and while this movie does have some of the elements from films we've seen before, we're not seeing these elements and saying "Oh, this again." The nice thing about the movie is that the audience is so sucked into the story and the characters that they don't really notice that they've seen some of these things before. And while we might sometimes be able to guess what may happen, it's the story of how it happens that intrigues us.
Bruce Willis plays Jeff Talley, a former hostage negotiator in Los Angeles who is now Chief of Police in the uneventful upper-class town of Bristo Camino. Basically he's gone from a high-stress job where he's trying to save peoples' lives to little more than a desk job where he tells corny jokes to his staff. We find out why he's no longer a negotiator in the first scene of the movie, and that sets the stage for later.
Things start to get ugly in Bristo Camino when a trio of teenagers decide to try and steal a well-off family's Escalade from their house. Things escalate from there, and it turns into a hostage situation (which you probably could have guessed from the title). The antagonists are Dennis Kelly (Jonathan Tucker), his brother Kevin (Marshall Allman), and Dennis' new acquaintance Mars (Ben Foster). Each plays a different role in the crime, with Dennis trying to be in charge, Kevin not wanting to be involved in the first place, and Mars being the extremely troubled, brooding crazy kid.
This is not a paint-by-numbers hostage drama where you have the crazy hostage-takers who keep making dumb decisions and threatening to shoot people, and then you execute a trade, and then the bad guys keep coming up with dumb ideas and so do the cops, etc, etc. The three kids, while obviously not brain surgeons, are in over their heads, but rather than seeing what they do and saying, "Why don't they just do this?" it's easy understand their decisions and their situation. Caught in the middle of the whole situation are the hostages themselves. Walter Smith (Kevin Pollack), his daughter Jennifer (Michelle Horn), and his son Tommy (Jimmy Bennett) all play a part in how the story unfolds, which is nice to see and more realistic than having them just sit quietly in the corner while this whole thing is worked out.
The main cast members all do a respectable job in their roles, though some of the supporting cast leave something to be desired (you don't see them much, though, so it's not that big a deal). Bruce Willis can do any action movie as he's shown many times, and he can do it with the requisite amount of emotion. The three villains also do an impressive job, playing their characters so that we don't like what they're doing, but at the same time we feel kind of sorry for them. If you like a good edge-of-your-seat suspense thriller, check this one out.
Final Score: 3.5 cents
Bruce Willis plays Jeff Talley, a former hostage negotiator in Los Angeles who is now Chief of Police in the uneventful upper-class town of Bristo Camino. Basically he's gone from a high-stress job where he's trying to save peoples' lives to little more than a desk job where he tells corny jokes to his staff. We find out why he's no longer a negotiator in the first scene of the movie, and that sets the stage for later.
Things start to get ugly in Bristo Camino when a trio of teenagers decide to try and steal a well-off family's Escalade from their house. Things escalate from there, and it turns into a hostage situation (which you probably could have guessed from the title). The antagonists are Dennis Kelly (Jonathan Tucker), his brother Kevin (Marshall Allman), and Dennis' new acquaintance Mars (Ben Foster). Each plays a different role in the crime, with Dennis trying to be in charge, Kevin not wanting to be involved in the first place, and Mars being the extremely troubled, brooding crazy kid.
This is not a paint-by-numbers hostage drama where you have the crazy hostage-takers who keep making dumb decisions and threatening to shoot people, and then you execute a trade, and then the bad guys keep coming up with dumb ideas and so do the cops, etc, etc. The three kids, while obviously not brain surgeons, are in over their heads, but rather than seeing what they do and saying, "Why don't they just do this?" it's easy understand their decisions and their situation. Caught in the middle of the whole situation are the hostages themselves. Walter Smith (Kevin Pollack), his daughter Jennifer (Michelle Horn), and his son Tommy (Jimmy Bennett) all play a part in how the story unfolds, which is nice to see and more realistic than having them just sit quietly in the corner while this whole thing is worked out.
The main cast members all do a respectable job in their roles, though some of the supporting cast leave something to be desired (you don't see them much, though, so it's not that big a deal). Bruce Willis can do any action movie as he's shown many times, and he can do it with the requisite amount of emotion. The three villains also do an impressive job, playing their characters so that we don't like what they're doing, but at the same time we feel kind of sorry for them. If you like a good edge-of-your-seat suspense thriller, check this one out.
Final Score: 3.5 cents
Tha Docta's two cents. | 11:45 AM
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