DVD Reviews

Hostage – Blu-ray Review

By Patrick Luce Aug 23, 2011, 18:18 GMT

Action extrordinaire Bruce Willis (Die Hard, Pulp Fiction, The Sixth Sense) stars as Jeff Talley, a big city hostage negotiator who voluntarily trades trauma for house calls when he becomes Chief of Police in a sleepy town. But when a random crime escalates into a deadly standoff, Talley finds himself thrust into a situation far more volatile and terrifying than anything he could ever imagine! Also starring Kevin Pollack (The ...more

Hostage arrives on Blu-ray and looks solid on the format. Even with a crystal clear picture, the film still has to be one of the worse Bruce Willis movies to come out in a long time. There are moments where it could have been good, but they are almost all ruined by the time the end credits roll.

Released in 2005 and based on the novel by Robert Crais, Hostage actually features a stellar cast of character actors including Ben Foster, Kim Coates, Robert Knepper, Jonathan Tucker, and Kevin Pollak.

We also get decent performances from some of its younger cast members – including Michelle Horn, Jimmy Bennett, and Rumer Willis. It was directed by Florent Emilio Siri (who has only directed one other project since its release according to IMDb) and featured a screenplay by Doug Richardson (his last writing project according to IMDb).

In the movie, Willis plays a “damaged” hostage negotiator who takes a job as a small town police chief after a hostage standoff in Los Angeles results in the death of a child. His Chief Talley soon finds himself caught up in another crisis situation after three troubled teens take a family hostage in their home and kill a police officer. After we learn that there is more to the family than we first thought, things go from bad to worse for Talley.

The teens, Mars Krupcheck (Foster), Dennis Kelly (Tucker) and Kevin Kelly (Marshall Allman), are basic losers and drug addicts. They aren’t master criminals and initially plan to do a simple home invasion after following Walter Smith (Pollak) and his family, daughter Jennifer (Horn) and son Tommy (Bennett), to their upscale home. Plans change after the petty criminals met some resistance and a cop shows up at the family’s gate to make sure everything is okay.

We also discover there is more to the widowed Walter than we first thought as his business might be a little less than on the up and up (he does hide work disc in old classic DVD films).

Willis’ character (who is dealing with family issues of his own) simply wants to turn the whole situation over to the state authorities and is happy to work traffic control while they call all the shots. Unfortunately for his character, mobsters take Talley’s estranged wife and daughter (played by his real life daughter Rumer Willis) hostage and threaten to kill them if he doesn’t get a computer disc that is located in the house.

This forces Talley to step up to the plate and try to talk his way into the house. The question quickly becomes is he trying to save the family trapped inside or his own family.

This double kidnapping sets up a good amount of tension in the movie as Willis struggles to get the disc for leverage against the mobsters and keep the family safe from the three teens robbers – who are spinning further out of control as the stress of the situation builds.

Willis does a good job at the beginning of the movie, and the duel-kidnapping plot really gets you caught up in the film. I thought it was a good twist on a familiar plot and worked really well. Willis is forced to try to save the family trapped in the house and sacrifice their safety for his own wife and daughter.

This situation gives the Talley character a lot of conflict as he works against his own judgment and puts the children in the house in danger. We see this through the scenes where Talley uses little Tommy to retrieve the computer disc.

Even with this good twist, the movie spins out of control towards the end and even becomes extremely laughable. This causes the film to lose any of the suspense quality it had built and totally ruins Willis’ character.

As the tension on Willis’ character builds, the actor goes into full “Die Hard” mode and rushes in the house to confront the mobsters and save the two kids. As this happens, Mars, who is a tad bit psycho, begins lighting the entire house of fire and blasting away at everything in sight.

The Mars character really ruins the film, and you have to wonder why director Florent Emilio Siri even kept the character in the movie. Instead of simply getting shot, like others in the final moments of the film, Mars seems like something from The Crow, and parades around the house as it is consumed in fire and gunshots.

The character is shot several times, stabbed, and set on fire, but still keeps going – like a psychotic Energizer Bunny. You also can’t help but laugh as Mars is on fire and looking at the kidnapped girl he thought loved him – who has a wet blanket over her head for a scene that almost seems Biblical.

After Willis has finished the terrible teen criminals, he still has to take on the mobster kidnappers – which leads to another gun battle and establishes just how bulletproof Willis is in an action movie.

Hostage is a movie that starts off really good, but ends extremely bad. It grabs your attention in the opening moments of the film, and keeps you glued through most of the movie. However, the final minutes ruin any feeling of originality it had and turn Hostage into another bad action movie.

On Blu-ray, the film looks solid, but there is no real reason to upgrade it from the DVD edition – if you were unfortunate enough to purchase the film on that format.