Hostage

Hostage (2005)

[Not really]
Extremely Trashy

I just realized that it has actually been a long time since I've posted a real review on here. Christ, the last one was Hannibal Rising. Wow. I don't even know what I'm doing anymore.

Okay, this is the most recent, and probably the last, movie in my Bruce Willis spree. It's about a former LAPD negotiator (Bruce Willis) who fucks up and gets a kid killed, and then leaves to go be a police man in a small, quiet town. Things are okay - his family hates him, but at least he doesn't really have to do anything that stressful until three teenagers (Ben Foster, Jonathan Tucker and Marshall Allman) break into some rich guy's house and take the family hostage. Unfortunately, the father (Kevin Pollak) works for the mob and they need some information from him so - still with me? - they take Bruce Willis' wife and daughter (Serena Scott Thomas and Rumer Willis, respectively) hostage and tell him to get the guy out unscathed... or.... or something. I kind of got mixed up at that point. I mean, everybody was constantly taking hostages for whatever reason and I basically stopped caring what happened.

The movie is only vaguely entertaining in that it is so fucking stupid - every person in the movie was a moron from the stoopid guys taking the first batch of hostages (they could have gotten out of there pretty easily, actually), to Bruce Willis (who, had he really given three shits about his family, would have just done what that other guy told him to do), to the stoopid mob guys (who were really not doing a very good job. I mean, the information was on a disc. All they had to do was wait for the police to kill the hostage takers, then wait a day or two, then come in disguised as police people and take whatever 'evidence' they needed). I mean, fuck, I could have handled that whole situation better and I'm borderline retarded.

In fact, it made me mad. It made me want to hit somebody. The whole time I was alternating between laughing insanely and quaking with irritation (I first wrote that as 'quacking with irritation').

There was some pretty damn funny stuff in there. Like the scene in which the bad guys sorta get Bruce Willis in his car and restrain him and then show him his family in the back of this van for a couple seconds and they're all freaking out... I felt bad about it, but I laughed nonetheless.

And then the scene in which Bruce Willis is talking to the Obnoxious Little Kid (Jimmy Bennett, who was the same kid what was in Firewall. That kinda messed me up) via mobile and they start comparing the situation to some video game and I think Bruce Willis says "Yeah, little Billy (or whatever the fuck the kid's name was), Wubba's gonna save planet Xenon". He says it in such a serious way, and then I think he starts crying. I couldn't contain my laughter at that point. Again, I felt sorta bad coz, you know, he was really hurt, but still. It was pretty damn amusing.

Anyway, the other problem I had with the movie was that I pretty much hated everybody in it. I didn't like that little fucking kid, I didn't like Jonathan Tucker (he is actually getting on my nerves. The first coupla things I saw him in, I was like, 'okay', but now he's in fucking every movie I watch and he annoys me) and was indifferent to Marshall Allman. I wasn't loving Michelle Horn - she was pretty but her character annoyed me. I didn't like Serena Scott Thomas or Rumer Willis (who is, incidentally, Bruce Willis' daughter IRL). I really didn't like whatever jerk was supposed to be playing the mob people. You never really see their faces but they all talk exactly the same so I'm going to say they're the same guy, and he pissed me off. His voice sounded like rubbing sandpaper on a cat.

Everyone else I was pretty indifferent towards. Ben Foster is, of course, always good and totally made the movie, such as it was (I think I probably would have stopped watching mid way were it not for him. He makes my day), as is Bruce Willis, but oddly, their characters actually lost interest at the exact same time. It's about four hours in or so, after Ben Foster kills the other jerks and the mob guys are bustin into the hosue.

In the same moment that Foster degenerates into just your average psycho and starts chasing the kids through the ventilation system (he also got stabbed in the face so he looked scaaaaaary), Bruce Willis also degenerates into just your average cowboy and rushes into the house to save the people despite the fact that the fucking jerk said he'd kill his fucking family if he fucking did that. How big of an asshole do you have to be to do that? Jesus Christ.

Anyway, on top of that the whole movie was ridiculously complicated and yet the resolution was simplistic to the point that I actually found myself wondering what the fuck had just happened.

Yeah, this movie was kind of crappy.

END

Directed by: Florent Emilio Siri. Written by: Doug Richardson, based on the novel by Robert Crais. Starring: Bruce Willis, Ben Foster, Jimmy Bennett, Michelle Horn, Jonathan Tucker, Marshall Allman, Kevin Pollak, Serena Scott Thomas, Rumer Willis.