Plot: What’s it about?
If there’s one thing that can be said about Bruce Willis is that he’s one of the more consistent actors out there. His “Die Hard” was essentially the blueprint for every action/thriller movie in the last 15 years and it’s no surprise that it catapulted him to superstardom. He’s had very few downs in his some twenty year career (Ok, “Hudson Hawk”), but he always seems to rebound with another movie. What’s more is that he hasn’t limited himself to just action movies. Take “Pulp Fiction”, “Sin City” and “The Sixth Sense” – all commercially and critically hailed. On the other hand there’s “The Last Boy Scout”, “Tears of the Sun” and his latest: “Hostage”. The key to a good movie is to give the audience something they haven’t seen before and something that certainly provokes thought. “Hostage” actually manages to do that on a few levels, and even though the concept and the title of the movie are a cliché – I found it interesting and fun to watch.
Willis plays Jeff Talley, a former hostage negotiator for the LAPD. A negotiation went wrong and everyone, including a young boy, was all killed. Talley took it personally and has since retreated to the suburbs where he’s the chief of police in a small town. As luck would have it, three teenage boys take it upon themselves to steal a car owned by local eccentric, Walter Smith (Kevin Pollack). We never really know what he’s into, but he burns encrypted information on DVD’s and makes a good living at it. The teenagers: Mars (Ben Foster), Dennis (Jonathan Tucker) and Kevin (Marshall Allman) kill a cop and in the panic, a carjacking turns into a hostage situation. What adds a little more depth to the story (and tension) is that Talley’s family has been kidnapped and he’s being held responsible for their lives if he doesn’t recover a certain DVD with the encrypted information on it. So the question is asked: Can Talley diffuse two hostage situations and get him and his family out of it alive?
“Hostage” didn’t exactly light up the box office, but got generally good reviews. The plot has been done a number of times, but I really enjoyed the extra twist with the second hostage situation. In the “small world” department, Willis’ real-life daughter, Rumer (Willis) stars as his daughter – and in the featurette Willis says that she auditioned like everyone else and won the part (yeah, right). While “Hostage” is certainly no “Die Hard”, it’s not really a bad movie. If nothing else, the plot is strong as is the acting and the Smith house is among the coolest I’ve seen in a movie – I wish I have a house like that at some point in the future. Really, you could do a lot worse and I recommend “Hostage” for a rental at the very least.
Video: How does it look?
The 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer is superb, especially since most of the action in “Hostage” takes place at night or indoors. I saw very little wrong with the image except for a bit of softness around some of the interior scenes. Clearly DVD has evolved to the point where everything that’s new will look just as good, or better, than it did in the theater. Fleshtones seemed warm and natural and I saw no evidence of artifacting or edge enhancement. For all the right reasons, “Hostage” looks good on DVD.
Audio: How does it sound?
The included Dolby Digital 5.1 track is very robust. I found myself turning the volume down a few times as things tend to blow up from time to time. By the end of the movie, the house is on fire, bullets whiz by and there’s enough background noise to give a very ambient nature. Dialogue seemed warm and natural and though surround effects were very active in some scenes, they were equally absent in others. Suffice it to say that “Hostage” has a pretty decent soundtrack here, one that brings the movie to life.
Supplements: What are the extras?
In the extras department, there really isn’t a whole lot. There’s the standard “Behind the Scenes…” featurette that runs about 15 minutes. It has the standard fare of cast and crew all talking about the script and such. There are some interesting tidbits here and there, but like I said – it’s your standard offering. There are some deleted scenes with optional commentary as well as two extended scenes. Siris’ comments are a bit hard to understand at times (this is the case with the commentary track as well), but he offers up some pretty realistic reasons why the scenes were cut or shortened. The commentary track is filled with little tidbits, but again his thick French accent makes it a bit hard to understand. All in all “Hostage” was an above-average thriller that didn’t get a lot of attention at the box office, maybe it will find some life on DVD – it’s certainly deserving of a look…
