HOSTAGE (2005)

I still don’t know what to make of Bruce Willis. For someone who is politically clearly on the opposite side of the aisle from me and who has cranked out his fair share of terrible movies, I can’t help but like the guy. In the Sixth Sense he turned in a taught, understated performance whispering most of his lines and allowing the camera to study the creases of character 20 years of bad action flicks had etched into his face. I walked away from M. Night Shyamalan’s debut feature thinking I might have to reconsider Mr. Willis’ chops as an actor.

Then a remarkable thing happened: it seemed as though every movie Bruce Willis starred in after the Sixth Sense, he showed up bald and hardly speaking above a whisper. This seemed to be the new Bruce Willis, no longer the brash New Yorker dropping one-liners at every turn in Moonlighting and the original Die Hard. Now his face seems to beg the audience to take him seriously and forgive him the sins of his past. And he asks our forgiveness in progressively hushed tones.

In the opening sequence of Hostage, Mr. Willis appears with long stringy hair and a beard patched with gray. Although I was initially convinced I was actually watching George Carlin, who has yet to play an action hero but I think his time will come, he is soon seen exiting a steamy bathroom clean shaven and…bald. But happily, it soon becomes apparent our hero is going to speak at normal volume.

The movie starts off strong, the pacing electric and the narrative solid. Then, as is the case with most movies nowadays, all the other plots start unfolding. Why can’t we enforce a rule that provides one plot per movie? The simple but effective story of a trio of idiots taking over a high-tech home and holding the father and his two kids hostage apparently wasn’t enough. It seems the father possesses a DVD, this movie’s MacGuffin, that corrupt and masked federal agents want “at all cost”. Soon, Willis’ family is held hostage so that he’ll do the evil agents bidding. There are simply bad guys everywhere, appearing like munchkins in the land of Oz.

All things being equal, it held my interest although I was aware that script, direction and the big business of keeping Mr. Willis’ career on life-support hi-jacked what good have been a taught, suspenseful thriller.

Directed by Florent Emilio Siri, I give Hostage (2005) three out of five molotov cocktails.