Hostages in the audience

If Hostage director Florent Emilio Siri thinks a little Italian swaggering can somehow transform a run-of-the-mill action/thriller into arthouse poetica, he’s got other news coming. Thanks, but no thanks, Signori. To even attempt such alchemy he would need to begin with a decent script, proper casting and a remotely original story, none of which are present here. His attempts at peppering mundane fare with artsy flavor simply leave the audience with genre-identity-crisis indigestion.

Bruce Willis stars as former LAPD hostage negotiator Jeff Talley, who moves out to the suburbs to take charge of a mom-and-pop precinct. His nerves have been shatterd after he failed at talking a suicidal sociopath out of murdering a little kid; a set-up presumably designed to invoke audience empathy. Guilt-ridden and plagued with self doubt, Talley retreats to Bristo Camino. There his marriage is inexplicably falling apart, apparently a result of Talley's obnoxious brat of a daughter (played by Willis' real life daughter Rumer).

Meanwhile, mysterious, bling-blinging accountant Mr. Smith (the typically solid Kevin Pollak in a painfully underdeveloped role) and his family, including jail-bait teenage daughter Jennifer (Michelle Horn), have drawn the ire of a trio of local blue-collar delinquents with their infuriating displays of opulence (driving an Escalade). The troubled youths decide to extract some pseudo-Marxist revenge by taking the Smiths hostage. The game is on.

Unfortunately, we never care about the Smiths or their captors and care even less about Talley’s emotional journey to try to rescue them. The three boys beat up Mr. Smith, stare lustily at Jennifer, and get outsmarted repeatedly by wee little Tommy Smith (Jimmy Bennett, possibly the next Macaulay Culkin), all without engaging the audience in the least. Ben Foster is particularly unconvincing as the third kidnapper, a precocious nihilist whose heart is as black as his badass leather jacket. Spare me.

The plot thickens when the teenage kidnappers discover that there are secrets to their captive accountant that they hadn’t, well, accounted for, but this intrigue doesn’t last long. Smith's secrets never really get revealed, contributing to the maddeningly disappointing mess the movie quickly becomes.

As for Willis, the negotiation drama is uninspiring and the supposed plot twists only provide him further opportunity to expose what a lousy dramatic actor he is. Give me yippe-ki-yay John McClane or even a wisecracking Hudson Hawk any day over Talley's grating melodramatic drivel. Siri’s casting reveals a blatant disregard for the tried and true rules of successful filmmaking: Don't cast Bruce Willis in a role that includes half a dozen scenes of a grown man bawling, and furthermore, don't try to turn boy-next-door Ben Foster into the anti-Christ. Like the self-satisfied Smiths, Siri deserves to be punished for this transgression. Do your part and stay home.

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