His character is one of those professional types who's suffered a traumatic experience in his line of work. Accordingly, he's stayed in the same field but moved to another venue -- something more low-key -- where he hopes he can be good at what he does and that nothing bad will happen again. Unfortunately, it does, and he's pulled right back into his old ways.
How interesting that we're talking about the one embodied by Bruce Willis, he of the smirky scowl, chrome dome, and a penchant for dispensing lines like "Yippee-ki-yay, mother..." About as big a movie star as you can get, he shot to stardom on the small screen with "Moonlighting" and then burst onto the big one with "Die Hard," director John McTiernan's brilliant work that's come to be known as the epitome of a smart, engaging and exciting action flick.
Unlike some action stars, Willis refused to be pigeonholed in that genre and thus played around in an assortment of others, some with success, others less so. And when too many failures cropped up, he found himself back in the original star-making genre. Following the 1999-2000 success of "The Sixth Sense," "The Whole Nine Yards" and, somewhat, "Unbreakable," he appeared in a string of underperformers including "Bandits," "Hart's War," "Tears of the Sun" and the biggest stinker of them all, "The Whole Ten Yards."
Needing to get the testosterone and box office money flowing again, he's now decided to headline "Hostage," another action flick where he must save his family while dealing with criminals who've taken over a building. If that sounds like "Die Hard" or any number of copycat films that tried to emulate its plot and success, you'd be right, but there are some subtle differences (at least from the first "DH" film).
Here, Willis is playing the more serious version of his genre archetype (thus no smug/witty remarks when dispatching the villains) and his is a damaged soul -- you know, the Hollywood type where something goes terribly wrong in the opening sequence and thus affects him from that point forward. That doesn't mean he still doesn't go in and clean house, but those subtle differences are supposedly present to give the film some added depth.
If one can put all of that behind them and flush any memory of McTiernan's film from their noggin, a less discerning viewer might find this moderately entertaining in a suspense/thriller-cum-action sort of way. And if the picture has somewhat of a European and almost comic book tinge to it (especially the opening credits for the latter), that's because director Florent Emilio Siri is behind the camera. While his credits include directing two video game releases and a straight to video offering, Siri does have a noticeable visual flair. It's not necessarily a good, let alone great one, but at least the film isn't boring from a visual standpoint.
That is, until some thugs come along and take the script hostage, knowing they're going to go down shooting if it's the last thing they do. I don't know if the blame should be leveled at screenwriter Doug Richardson ("Die Hard 2," "Money Train"), original novelist Robert Crais or some faceless entity-slash-hack, but the plot -- while serviceable for the first two thirds of the film -- completely falls apart in the third. That's when the call is made to ratchet up the action and bloodshed, thus throwing what little smarts the film contained out the window in favor of a growing body count.
Of course, this isn't the first film to deal with such a protagonist -- many a cop TV show and/or movie has featured the same, most notably the appropriately titled "The Negotiator" from 1998 (that had a far more interesting and somewhat more complex plot).
The bigger problem, however, lies with the age-old issue of a hero (and thus their story) only being as good as the villains. The filmmakers at least try to add another layer of complexity to their story by having two separate groups of them. Yet, the first are boring when not over the top screen creations, while the second, more nebulous ones are almost always seen masked and thus are devoid of most any interesting and thus engaging characteristic.
While watching Willis deal with both sets, all I could think about was wishing that Hans Gruber (the terrific Alan Rickman from the first "Die Hard" film) or, to a lesser extent, his brother from the third film (Jeremy Irons) would show up and bring a little class and, dare I say, humor to the villainy on display. The ones here are straight out of the Central Casting playbook for bad guys. The only halfway notable one is Ben Foster ("Big Trouble," "Get Over It") who -- with the aid of Siri's equally over the top, slow motion filmmaking -- tries to emulate the sort of slick but ruthless character embodied by Antonio Banderas in many a Robert Rodriquez flick.
Thus, and without much of a smart or clever script with which to work, Willis looks like he's just going through the motions, doing his requisite action time until he gets to return to other genres. Kevin Pollak ("The Whole Ten Yards," "3000 Miles to Graceland") is rather boring as the kidnapped father-cum-crooked accountant, but young Jimmy Bennett ("Daddy Day Care," "Pooh's Heffalump Movie") is decent as his resourceful son (who makes his way through the home's ventilation system that's large enough to provide air for the Pentagon, let alone a single family house). The likes of Michelle Horn, Serena Scott Thomas and even Bruce's daughter, Rumer, can't do much with their sketchily drawn parts.
If you've never seen an action flick before -- something of a tall order in today's world of multiple home entertainment streams -- you might find this one somewhat thrilling. But if you've seen the best of the bunch -- the film that made Willis a marquee star -- you'll likely just see this as recycled leftovers wasting time until Willis plays the smirking, scowling and memorable-phrase-dropping, New York cop once again in the upcoming "Die Hard 4." "Hostage," which is how you may feel as the film unfolds and unravels during its 110-some minute runtime, rates as a 4 out of 10.
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