Hey folks, Harry here... here's a look at the new film from the director of NID DE GUEPES - and while this review isn't the best, in fact it isn't very positive at all... but still, I'm very very much looking forward to this. The review has spoilers. Brainbug says it is fun while it happens, but afterwards you're left with many wtf's. We shall see...
Hey Quint, Harry, whoever!
Last night I attended a research screening of the Bruce Willis movie HOSTAGE at the Loews Kips Bay theater in New York City. They had a guy come up and give the usual speech about how the color and sound might be a little off, but that it would all be fixed when the movie comes out. Personally, I saw no evidence of any of this, and I’m usually pretty nitpicky about picture and sound; the movie certainly looked finished, though since it’s a Miramax release, maybe they’ll be scissoring it all the way up till the March release date. It’s also possible that I didn’t notice sound problems because the sound was BLASTING my ears into submission the entire time. The melodramatic score felt like it was throttling me.
Anyway, the movie itself isn’t too hot. Here’s a summary of the set-up (minor spoilers ahead – all stuff that happens in the first forty minutes, and will likely be given away in the ads, but might bother you if you want to go into the movie completely clean): Bruce Willis is a hostage negotiator who suffers a typical opening-scene cop-movie trauma, and subsequently relocates from Los Angeles to a small town to take a job as sheriff. Kevin Pollak plays a rich dude with a teenage daughter and pre-teen son; a trio of delinquents (Ben Foster and Jonathan Tucker are the main ones) take the family hostage in their own home after what I guess is a really bizarre, sort of indoor carjacking (who breaks into a rich guy’s house to steal a car?? These guys, I guess). Willis is called in to negotiate.
The semi-twist is: the rich guy is in cahoots with some shadowy bad guys, who then take Willis’s family hostage and demand that he retrieve a valuable item from the house. So Willis now has to “negotiate” between saving the family inside while doing what the bad guys want to save his own family.
This set-up is actually pretty cool—-it gets more balls in the air, so to speak, than most action/thriller type pictures. I’m a sucker for “guy in a tight spot” thrillers (like OUT OF TIME and CELLULAR); I dug the idea of two sets of hostages, and one dude trying to negotiate both from different angles. But the execution is, if not botched, very close to it. It’s basically a cool thriller story with a lot of tense moments, but assembled without any real rhythm. The movie changes point of view so many times that characters who seem important appear and disappear for long stretches of the movie. The tense moments – at least some of which were accentuated by that blasting sound system – don’t build on each other effectively. You don't get a feeling of increasing pressure on Willis.
Also, some of the movie just doesn’t make enough sense. I’ll try to be vague: At one point, one set of bad guys decides to do something which makes perfect sense... so much sense, in fact, that you wonder why they didn’t do it an hour earlier. The only answer (as far as I can tell-- maybe I missed something) is that the movie’s plot wouldn’t go forward if they did this immediately. This is what I mean about a good story, poorly told; what happens is intriguing, even exciting, but *why* it happens is often murky or nonsensical. I do hope they at least leave it alone and don't try to cut *more* out-- I can't imagine how little sense it would make at 90 minutes instead of the nearly 120 it is now.
I also detected a weird anti-young-person slant to the movie. It’s as if it was scripted by a crotchety senior citizen; all of the teenage characters are characterized as sullen, inept, or troubled. *Both* hostage daughters are seen acting bratty and petulant early on, and the teenage hostage-takers (in over their head, natch) are even worse. The Ben Foster character is a preening psycho, and by the end of the movie he bears a comical resemblance to The Crow. Jonathan Tucker overacts, as his character sputters and sweats – he constantly looks like he’s on the verge of spewing. This does nothing to neutralize his unfortunate resemblance to Screech of TV’s Saved by the Bell. Basically, everyone in the movie between the ages of 12 and 20 is portrayed as a screwup. The second most heroic character after Willis is the chipmunk-like younger brother character; his age isn’t given, which I think is so he can variously act like he’s 5, or 8, or 10, or however old the movie wants him to act (for example – he’s crafty enough to get out of his bonds and scurry around the house undetected, but then when he gets Willis on a cell phone he’s practically screaming into it).
Willis is okay in this; he’s basically playing John McLane (sic?) without the humor. He’s neither as great as he can be in his “real acting” roles (NOBODY’S FOOL, 12 MONKEYS... damn, Willis, it’s been awhile, hasn’t it?) nor as fun in his “movie star” roles.
Basically, HOSTAGE would be entertaining enough if you caught it on cable, or snuck into it after seeing something better. You’re sorta into it as it happens, and then as soon as it’s over, you start going over your “WTF?” list.
If you use this, call me brainbug!
