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Hostage (DVD, 2005)
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I'm so glad I decided to watch this dvd. Being a great fan of everything written by Robert Crais, I had recently finished the book and wanted to see the characters in the flesh. Bruce Willis makes a perfect Jeff Talley, it could almost have been written for him, and I was not disappointed to have him become the lead character. Ben Foster plays a very credible Mars, and although nothing like the book description manages to provide his own stamp on the psychopathic character. The film does leave out quite a lot of the detail of the book, but nevertheless is a chilling, exciting standalone version. Thoroughly entertaining. Great shots of LA too, very Robert Crais!
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
Exceptionally good all round
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
Promising a return to Die Hard era Bruce Willis, Hostage rifles on to theater screens everywhere this weekend. This of course begs the question: Do we want Die Hard era Bruce back? My gut reaction is that I do not. The man’s not as young as he once was. At some point, like Stallone and Arnold, he’s going to have to bow out of these action roles. At some point, he’ll have too many wrinkles to be a believable action hero. In fact, he’s nearly there now. More than that, Willis’ recent slate of films has been interesting and much more significant than his Die Hard work. Sure those Die Hard movies are a lot of fun, but give me the nuanced, delicate performances of Willis in The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable over that. In short, there’s no good artistic reason for going back. Bruce Willis is going back anyway and in doing so perhaps hopes to make a lot of money off square-jawed alpha-males ill-content to watch any movie where things aren’t being shot the heck up. Luckily for the rest of us, not only does Hostage shoot things up, it throws in a little thriller drama as well. In fact, Hostage takes a kitchen sink approach to the thriller genre, throwing in elements from all types of similar films. It’s a siege movie, a hostage movie, a burned out cop movie, a kid uses crazy gadgets to defend his house movie. The result is a story that feels original as a whole, but looks derivative when broken down into pieces. Stir Die Hard, Home Alone, The Glass House, Panic Room, The Crowe, and even Unbreakable into a nice frothy stew and you’ll come out with something that closely resembles Hostage. In an era where just about everything in film is ripping off someone else, I’m not sure that’s really a negative. The fact that director Florent Emilio Siri has managed to put so many different things in his pot and bring them to a fresh boil is actually something of a worthy achievement. Opening with a credits sequence lifted from the cover of a cheap Tom Clancy novel, Hostage introduces us to Jeff Talley (Bruce Willis) in the midst of a hostage negotiation. Clad in a Hawaiian shirt and calmly combing his thick unruly beard, my first impression was that The Dude had taken a new job working for The Man. But Talley’s relaxed demeanor soon fades as the hostage negotiation goes bad, and the psycho on the other end of the line starts shooting. Shell shocked by his failure to save innocents, Talley shaves off all his body hair and moves to a small, wealthy community with his family where he serves as the town Sheriff. One of the most refreshing things about this film is that they’ve stayed away from casting characters out of the stock pool of “pretty people” knocking around Hollywood begging to be in movies. Maybe they’re just trying to make Bruce Willis look more like a “star” by comparison, but whatever the reason the actors cast look real. Jeff's teenage daughter (played by Willis’ real life daughter Rumer) doesn’t look like a model, and his wife (Serena Scott Thomas) doesn’t resemble a younger, hotter version of Demi Moore. They along with everyone in the movie are simply nice, normal looking people. Talley and his wife are having nice, normal problems too. They’ve hit a rocky patch in their marriage, and their daughter fears divorce. Jeff is still grappling with feelings of failure after leaving his high pressure, high profile hostage negotiating job and though he claims to enjoy the “low crime” work he has now, a small part of him still wants to be a hero. HRead full review
Hostage is a very slick, very well-acted suspense film. Bruce Willis was a cop (with awesome Rob Zombie hair) who messed up a hostage crisis and then moved to a small town, becoming a sheriff kinda guy. Of course, something happens and he finds himself in the middle of a more personal hostage situation and has to prove his worth and yadda yadda yadda. Bruce Willis seems to have cracked his action movies for this decade. Back in the 90s every Bruce Willis movie was pretty much the same old thing (funny lines, guns and a complete disregard for anything resembling reality). Now he's a little older and a wiser (?) his movies seem to be gettting a lot more hardcore. They're all pretty much the same thing but Willis has found his "old person" persona. He's the alcoholic failure with the gravelly voice and the hard stare, totally dropping his smartass, dock-worker, everyman kind of hero. Hostage has none of the wise-cracking that made Die Hard such fun but I found the writing here very strong and the film moves at a cracking pace. How much you enjoy Hostage all depends on how much you like Bruce Willis really. Personally I love the guy. He's come on leaps and bounds as an actor in recent times. Hostage everything you'd expect from one of his action flicks, though it is a lot more intense than a Mercury Rising or a Die Hard sequel. The supporting cast are fantastic and the music is superb. I think Bruce Willis gives one of his best performances to date here. Hostage is way over the top and I had a whole lot of fun with it. Worth watching. Willis fans will totally dig it.Read full review
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