Hostage

Bruce Willis’ character opts for a quieter life, but doesn’t get one.

Herald rating: * * *


Yes, it's Bruce Willis with a gun and badge but it's not quite that Bruce Willis. True, it does end up in cartoonish Die Hard territory with an OTT ending that seems mismatched to the rest of this mostly engaging siege thriller. But, while contrived, at least it tries to rise above the usual cliches.

Willis is Jeff Talley, a cop, who, burnt out by his LAPD hostage-negotiator duties, has opted for a quieter life as the captain of a small police department in a California backwater.

The film plays nicely off Willis' more familiar screen persona. But the star delivers a convincingly vulnerable character whose career change hasn't been the answer to keeping his family in one piece. Willis' own daughter Rumer plays his character's troubled teenage daughter in a few scenes.

But soon Talley is at the centre of a hostage crisis involving three car-jacking teenagers, a mafia accountant and his two kids, all holed up in a clifftop house with a state-of-the-art security system.

While Talley, despite losing an officer in the initial stand-off, is happy to let the local S.W.A.T. squad take over, he is pulled back in by unseen bad guys who have kidnapped his family.

They want Talley to recover a precious disk from the accountant's home before it falls into law-enforcement hands.

Talley must use his wits to play the various sides off against each other. He has help from a resourceful young kidnap victim inside the house but one of his kidnappers (Ben Foster from Six Feet Under) turns increasingly psychopathic. You know it's only a matter of time before he'll be giving his female victim weird looks, writing on the mirrors in his own blood and generally upsetting Talley's plans.

Most of the first two acts resemble the likes of Panic Room with French director Siri delivering much Hitchcock-ian atmosphere and allowing his characters - especially Willis - a depth of character you wouldn't otherwise expect in a Bruce Willis action film.

But the convolutions soon start piling up at the midpoint, stoking it for an overwrought finale which makes the usual Die Hard endings look like models of restraint.

CAST: Bruce Willis, Kevin Pollak, Ben Foster
DIRECTOR: Florent Emilio Siri
RATING: R16 (violence, offensive language)
RUNNING TIME: 114 mins
SCREENING: Village, Hoyts Berkeley cinemas