Hostage (2005) Review

We hate to say it, but an episode of Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown featuring Bruce Willis and Kevin Pollak would have been waaay more entertaining.

More of this guy... © Miramax Films

Back in the fall of 1992, Ben Stiller nailed a parody of Die Hard on his short-lived sketch comedy show for FOX, which went on to win an Emmy for the comedian and his co-stars Andy Dick, Janeane Garafolo and Bob Odenkirk. There was John McClane, shopping on Christmas Eve at a generic grocery store and wondering aloud about his cursed holiday luck after the produce section was taken over by terrorists. At one point, Stiller-as-Willis could be seen running down an aisle, desperately trying to come up with a new 'Yippie Kai Yay' catch phrase by looking at some of the merchandise on the shelves and free associating.

But that was then, and this is now. Rather than the boffo action star biding his time between Die Hard 2 (1992) and Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Willis is a 49-year-old icon in search of one more action hurrah. More remarkably, it is now Stiller, the man who made fun of Willis, towering above him on the box office charts with family friendly comedies such as Meet the Fockers.

If Stiller were still in the sketch comedy game, he would most likely parody Hostage as something called Try Hard, for it is clear that Willis and his producing partner Arnold Rifkin saw this well-intentioned but hopeless mess as a perfect kind of wink-wink warm-up for next year's Die Hard 4.0. Instead, it's proof positive that Miramax should stay out of the high octane Hollywood action game and that the combination of a promising young French director (Florent Siri) and a great French director (co-writer Luc Besson) do not necessarily translate to a well-directed English language action thriller.

Less of this guy... © Miramax Films

What's most frustrating about Hostage is that it opens with its best scene. Willis appears on screen in surprising Grizzly Adams garb as Jeff Talley, a bearded LAPD legend stretched out on the pavement of a rooftop parking lot adjacent to a hostage taking in progress. As the S.W.A.T. team frenzy swirls around him, Talley tries to calmly talk down - via wireless telephone headset - a man holding a woman and child captive in the bungalow below.

So far, so good. We have Willis, looking very much like we might imagine John McClane would in L.A. ten years later, working the same general stressed out beat. This is going to be good, you think to yourself as you settle into a comfy chair with bucket of popcorn in hand. Then, after the fantastic opening plays itself out - with the kind of sound editing that gets nominated for those obscure Academy Awards - the dreaded title card appears. Then, all of a sudden, we are catapulted into a different movie, a different character, a different place. And for no good reason.

Because Willis' empty emotional gas tank after working all those hostage takings; the spectacular fortress of a house in Ventura County where the remainder of the film unfolds; and the subplot about his wife and daughter, disenchanted over his decision to move away from the craziness of Los Angeles and become the police chief of a small town. It all could have unfolded in L.A. and in fact, in real life, the house featured in the film is located in L.A.'s Topanga Canyon.

Tipper Gore's worst nightmare © Miramax Films

Those aforementioned wink-wink aspects of the film, centered mainly around the idea that the man who once played the great John McClane is now comfortably inhabiting a policeman character pretty much identical to the one Reginald VelJohnson played in Die Hard, could have been milked so much more effectively against the familiar Los Angeles skyline.

But as it is, the specter of Willis' breakout 1988 hit looms over the movie in various unwelcome ways. Instead of the masterful Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber, a terrorist motivated by the scent of money, we have a shiftless trio of male hoodlums, stumbling into the house of contented bookkeeper Walter Smith (Kevin Pollak) and then taking him and his two kids hostage for reasons that are never articulated or clear.

Co-stars Horn, Bennett © Miramax Films

Granted, talented young actor Ben Foster (Six Feet Under) does his best to play the emerging hostage standoff ringleader Mars Krupcheck as someone who not only looks like Marilyn Manson, but also wants to live out his wildest song lyric fantasies. But we don't care about these three hoodlums (Jonathan Tucker, Marshall Allman complete the group), nor do we really believe the way their whole joyride goes wrong. As a result, everything is lost - the takeoff on all those Die Hard air duct scenes with Smith's young son (Jimmy Bennett) crawling through them instead; the throwaway gag about Hollywood remakes and ripoffs centered around Heaven Can Wait; even the scene that slyly plays off the Pulp Fiction car accident and duct tape routine, which, as it is, simply throws the plot into completely unbelievable overdrive.

Director Florent Siri made a wonderful little film in France a few years ago called The Nest. It is similar in tone to where Hostage is aiming and, according to the press notes, immediately caught the attention of Willis and Rifkin over at their Cheyenne Films banner. But just like co-writer Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita towers over Bridget Fonda's Point of No Return, The Nest shows up Hostage for the time waster that it is.

In the end, all that's left are a few valuable lessons for Die Hard 4.0 director John McTiernan. They include: star Bruce Willis should pay close attention to the plot logic of any Die Hard-related project before deciding to bring along a family member like Rumer for the ride (she plays his daughter in the film); McTiernan's DP should stay away from blazingly saturated backlit night scenes; and, above all, McTiernan should consider enlisting Stiller for a scene-stealing moment of early comic relief, say as the convenience store owner that rings up McClane's fresh order of Hostess Twinkies.