Hostage

All guts, no glory: Bloody thriller Hostage fumbles the talents of Bruce Willis

By Jeannette Catsoulis

Whatever you may think of Bruce Willis, it's impossible to write him off as just another action star. For every mindless Die Hard hero, there's the repulsive husband of Mortal Thoughts or the desperate palooka of Pulp Fiction; for every Armageddon there's a Hart's War. Under the encouraging eye of director M. Night Shyamalan, Willis was stunning as the haunted heart of The Sixth Sense and the reluctant superhero of Unbreakable. Clearly, the man can act; just as clearly, Hostage doesn't care.

From the propulsively creative opening titles--with cast names stamped on the police helicopters, bullhorns and rifle barrels of a hostage standoff--to the inevitably bloody ending, Hostage is the most stylish piece of sadism to appear this year. To its credit, the film warns us immediately of its lack of delicacy, gleefully blowing away a mother and small child in the first five minutes. From then on every underage character in sight is either gagged, bound, beaten, stabbed, shot or tossed over a balcony. In fact, the only people worse off than the kids in this movie are the cops.

Willis plays Jeff Talley, batting a thousand as a hostage negotiator for the L.A.P.D. Bearded and scraggly-haired, Talley works with the cockiness of someone who's never met a psycho he couldn't control; so when a situation turns sour and the aforementioned family unit is annihilated, Talley takes it so hard he's forced to shave. One year later, newly bald in head and jaw, he's chief of police in sleepy Ventura County, where the definition of excitement is a Krispy Kreme opening and his only distraction is a crumbling marriage and a daughter (Willis offspring Rumer) who can't stand him.

As is the way of the action-adventure, peace is short-lived. Looking for thrills and easy money, three young punks invade the luxurious hillside home of one Mr. Smith (Kevin Pollak), an accountant whose mysterious business enterprises demand state-of-the-art security systems. While the glittery-eyed Mars (Ben Foster, better known as Claire's weird boyfriend Russell on "Six Feet Under") sexually threatens Smith's pubescent daughter (Michelle Horn), her resourceful younger brother (Jimmy Bennett) trips an alarm and Talley is reluctantly back on the front lines. Redemption beckons.

Ultraviolent and exploitative, Hostage is a rote thriller that's nonetheless queasily watchable. French director Florent Emilio Siri (The Nest), in his first English-language film, appears to have enough to contend with without worrying about details like acting: soaring crane shots, slow-motion SUV-pileups, bullets flying hither and yon. Consequently there's no one to restrain Willis from some of the worst over-emoting of his career (the crying jag is particularly embarrassing), or to suggest to Miss Horn that the average teenage girl would be unlikely to confront a psychotic killer armed only with sullen looks and an aggressive cleavage.

With its pronounced imagery and hysterical rush to climax, it's perfectly fitting that the crucial connection in Hostage--between Talley and the young male captive--is enabled by the shared language of video games. All the more jarring, then, to learn from the movie's production notes that director Siri was "trained" by none other than French filmmaking legend Eric Rohmer, whose languid, meandering rejections of plot (Autumn Tale, Claire's Knee) are the very antithesis of Siri's style. One can only assume the training didn't stick.