“Hostage,” the latest addition to the oft-bloody, pyrotechnically abounding, serially uneven oeuvre of Bruce Willis, is a stylishly rendered collection of action-flick clichés that casts Willis in a familiar role: Burnt-out cop turned reluctant hero. Willis is usually at his best in these sorts of explosive settings, and here he acquits himself soundly as Jeff Talley, an older (naturally) toned down version of his celebrated “Die Hard” character, John McClane. But “Hostage” lacks a convincingly nefarious foil — the villains here are no match for Alan Rickman’s devilish Hans Gruber and his band of baddies — and relies too heavily on a series of implausible events.
When we meet him, Talley’s a hotshot LAPD hostage negotiator who blows a call resulting in the deaths of a young mother and her child. Devastated, Talley retires to a low-profile gig as a police chief in a tranquil Ventura County hamlet. The move has put considerable strain on his marriage and his relationship with his restless teenaged daughter (played, with conspicuous effort, by Willis’ real offspring, Rumer) setting up what will be, for our hero, an opportunity for redemption. It arrives when three troubled teens lay siege to the palatial estate of widowed accountant Walter Smith (Kevin Pollack) and his two children, nubile Jennifer (Michelle Horn) and 8-year-old Tommy (Jimmy Bennett). Smith, it turns out, is the point man in a money-laundering operation for a mysterious cadre of well-connected criminals. Smith’s captivity threatens to disrupt a major deal, the nature of which is never revealed, so the crooks kidnap Talley’s brood and force him to help them retrieve a CD containing critical information.
Though intermittently entertaining, “Hostage” is most grievously ill-served by a character called Mars (Ben Foster), the leader of the young men who abduct the Smiths and a laughable caricature of a menacing psycho. What promises to be a pretty taut thriller unravels midway through courtesy of Mars’ cannabis-fueled descent into madness. Foster’s performance in a poorly written role is the stuff Razzie Awards are made of, complete with overblown thrash-metal sound-track and slow-mo tracking shots straight out of a bad music video. (Rated R for strong brutal violence, language and some drug use. Running time: 102 minutes)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 11, 2005. Read the original PDF.