Talk about "Hostage" here:
Review by: Breanne Derby
Plot Summary
Jeff Talley (Bruce Willis), used to work as a negotiator with people in hostage situations. Unfortunately, Talley was not able to calm down a man, and the negative situation resulted in the death of all persons involved, including an innocent child. Grief wracked and distraught, Talley traded in his job as a negotiator for that of a small-town police chief, and the stress he's been under since the incident has nearly destroyed his family. Talley thinks that his negotiating days are finally behind him, but learns otherwise when three young men (Jonathan Tucker, Ben Foster, and Marshall Allman) take a wealthy family in his area hostage, and it's up to him to communicate with them to try and get everyone out of the house and keep everyone alive.
Review
The first thing that is seen in this movie is the opening credits, and it opens on the previous hostage situation, where Talley fails to save the victims, but before the action begins, the scene is animated in an almost cartoon-esque way with mostly black-and white people and buildings and a blood red sky. This beginning animation strongly reminded me of
Sin City with its black and white filming with colored elements thrown in for emphasis. At first, I thought it was going to be a Sin City knock off, which would be kind-of silly because Bruce Willis also starred in Sin City, but fortunately it was not.
The plot of this film is really a lot more elaborate than one expects. There was a point in time when I was beginning to think "okay, where's it going to go from here?" but as soon as that thought had escaped my mind, another aspect of the plot was introduced, and everything got a lot more complicated. It wasn't difficult to understand the complication of things and why it was complicated, but it seemed almost unrealistic to build so much of the story around the fact that the boys "picked the wrong house."
The setting of the film is very interesting. The vast majority of it takes place in and around an enormous house. In the first shot of the house, it's beautiful, and built on an apparently large plot of land since there are no other houses around and it's obvious that the people who live there are very wealthy. However, as the film progresses, the house transforms from the beautiful lap of luxury into a horrible deathtrap for those inside.
The acting was altogether good, though some of the actors didn't really have much to do other than look upset the whole time. Even the less famous actors like Jonathan Tucker and Ben Foster did quite a good job portraying their characters. The characters in the film were altogether stereotypical, but the actors and actresses almost made the stereotypes believable. Talley's daughter was the typical angst-ridden teen, and she was played by Bruce Willis' real-life daughter Rumer Willis. The daddy-daughter relationship between Bruce and Rumer is believable because it is real.
Throughout the film there are also interesting lighting effects used. There is one scene where Ben Foster's character sticks his head out of the shadows, and there are several scenes where the shadows are cast in interesting and almost artistic manners about the set. The "making of" feature on the DVD makes mention of the techniques they used to achieve the shadows and effects used throughout the film.
Conclusion
As a whole, this movie wasn't excellent or earth-shattering, but it wasn't horrible either. I would probably watch it again. It would definitely be interesting to see the things I noticed the second time around. I saw somewhere that Jonathan Tucker who plays Dennis also plays one of the men helping Talley out on the rooftop in the beginning, and that would be interesting to take a look at. I did have a bit of trouble taking Ben Foster seriously as a troubled serial killer only because I grew up watching him play the "boy next door," Tucker James on the 1996 TV series Flash Forward. Hostage itself wasn't a bad film, though there was a lot going on. If I had to describe it in one word, I'd say "intense." Three stars for "Hostage" because it wasn't horrendous, and I'd probably watch it again in the future. I feel the same way about this film as I felt about "Man on Fire" which isn't really a bad thing, but it's not a great thing either.
