Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with another early look at the latest from the director of THE NEST, called HOSTAGE. Harry loves Floren Siri a lot... like, scary a lot. I'm pulling for him to make Bruce Willis the badass again. This one really dug the flick. I guess we'll all see how great this flick really is in a few weeks as it comes out on the 11th of March...
I just got home from a test screening tonight of the latest Bruce Willis film "Hostage" at the Secaucus Plaza 8 in New Jersey and I wanted to drop my two cents on this one. This is definitely a return to the type of action/thriller film where Bruce Willis is at his best. I thought this was a fairly decent thriller packed with enough twists, genuinely intense moments and visual stimuli to make for a solid and exciting thriller. "Hostage" won't be the best movie of the year and most certainly not Willis' best work to date, but if you liked him in "Die Hard" or liked movies like "The Negotiator" or maybe even the visual style of "Collateral" you'll probably dig this one.
One thing for sure, I did think this was WAY better than most of Willis' recent appearances in movies like "Hart's War" or "Tears of the Sun." Though this movie doesn't have the total charm or balls from his best films or even for that matter give us a line like "Yippie Ki Yay Motherfucker" (or whatever that phrase was), it does makes up for it with some darker, moodier and more dramatic moments without resorting to lame overblown Hollywood humor. Another thing I didn't mind was the dramatic sound, it wasn't overcranked for me and I like to sit right up front.
I just read through Brainbug's review tonight after I saw the film and I agree that this film seemed like the finished product to me. Even though I may not be the expert on technical matters, I didn't notice any sound or other flaws in the film they screened. BUT it does seems like there have been some changes or edits to the film because this version was only about 1 hour 45 minutes long. It seems from the previous review that there have been some changes to this movie, probably for the better.
I won't bother going through every single plot point as I don't want to spoil the movie (I hate when people do that), but there are a couple things that are worth mentioning and will SPOIL a few surprises for you if you read on. First off, I've never seen anything by this director before and I don't know anything about him, but I think he's someone to watch. The film opens with a really strong scene and pretty much keeps up the pace throughout. I thought the opening scene was killer -- Willis plays a somewhat renegade and confident Los Angeles SWAT team hostage negotiator in the midst of a crisis situation. Awesome visuals and of course the crisis goes wrong. OK, maybe a little bit clichéd, but cut to a year later and he's a small town sheriff. Here is the buff and bald Willis we love, ready for anything that comes at him. At this point I'm like "yeah!" Rock on.
The action really starts right away when three inept teenage hooligans with guns break into Kevin Pollak's modern high-tech house outfitted with all the latest security. Think "Panic Room" on steroids. Pollak plays a nebbish accountant of some sort in on some corruption, how else do you explain two big bags of cash in his in-home safe. The house features some cool gadgets plenty of security cams, and all sorts of cool crawl spaces. Reminded me of "Mission Impossible" a little bit. So why do these teenage vandals break into the house if they want to steal the family's Escalade. Well, because the car keys are in the house! Who leaves their car keys in the ignition? This is NOT a WTF moment at all. Anyhow aside from the nerdy dad, the family is the sexy and sullen teen daughter and the young son. I've never seen him in anything before and he does an good enough acting job, but I was mostly glad that it wasn't Haley Joel Osment again.
After some people get killed (I'm not saying who) Willis gets involved in the middle of the negotiation to save this family. Ok not too exciting really, but then a huge plot twist happens that really mixes everything up quite a bit for Willis. This is where it gets exciting.
SPOILER - All of a sudden faced with an entirely other set of hostages, Willis is right back in the thick of things and has to save the first family in order to save his OWN family. It's a really good wrench thrown in that creates a fair amount of tension. At this point the pressure does build on Willis and he has to think quick. This is where all the cleverness that I loved about John McClane in "Die Hard" comes out. There are at least two other twists that Willis has to deal with or create in order to get out of the jam and he does so with gusto. He plays a tough, no bull kind of cop when the pressure hits. I did think that the three teenage thugs were idiotic, but they are meant to be. They are pickup truck driving, in-over-their-heads fools and they didn't disappoint. Though I liked their manic intensity the crazy one of the bunch (I think his name was Mars) was a little much at times. The local cops seemed a little simple (aren't they always?) and I didn't buy that they would just let the FBI come in to the middle and take over the way they do, but it made sense in an action movie sort of way. If I had to pick on anything it's that most of the action is confined to the house, but he had a visual style that made it work where it didn't feel overly claustrophic.
There are some great moments, some not incredible moments, but if you're looking for a good thriller, this is Bruce Willis back in the saddle again. It's certainly not his best movie ever, but it's a reasonably good story that made perfect sense to me.
I am Three Caller.
