Hostage (2005) * * *

 

Directed by:  Florent Emilio Siri

Starring:  Bruce Willis, Kevin Pollak, Ben Foster, Jonathan Tucker, Jimmy Bennett, Michelle Horn, Marshall Allman

Bruce Willis is more vulnerable in Hostage than in any movie he starred in previously.  Those expecting another Die Hard will be disappointed, or maybe pleasantly surprised by his role of a former hostage negotiator who finds himself in the middle of another hostage situation.   As Hostage opens, Jeff Talley (Willis) attempts to control a violent domestic in which a father is holding his wife and son prisoner in a barricaded house.   The father kills his family and himself.  Talley is devastated and one year later he is the chief of police in a small Northern California town in which crime is low and the only drama Talley faces is from his estranged wife and daughter.  

That changes when three criminals in a pickup truck target a fancy SUV driven by accountant Walter Smith (Pollak) to steal.  They follow the vehicle to his home in the hills, break in to the house, and soon take the family hostage.   Talley arrives at the scene, but after one of his deputies is killed, he turns the situation over to the country sheriff and washes his hands of the whole thing.   Not so fast.  Walter cooks the books and launders money for a criminal organization, keeping the records on DVD's.   A hooded man and his associates kidnap Jeff's family and force Jeff to enter the house and retrieve the disk or else.   Matters have just become doubly complicated. 

Jeff now has to take over the hostage negotiations as well as keep his real objective secret from everyone.  He receives assistance from Walter's son (Bennett), who is hiding in the house's roomy air ducts.  Are home air ducts usually wide enough to allow people to crawl through them or hole up in there as long as the plot requires?  In movies, yes.  Willis' John McClane can attest to that, but at least he was trapped in a high-rise office building's ventilation system.

What separates Hostage from other action movies of this type is Willis' vulnerability and allowing him to not have all the answers.   He is as uncertain and scared as others might be in his circumstances, which transforms Hostage into a movie with a mind.