The first half-hour of "Hostage" is excellent - it's innovative, stylish, gritty and fun.
But then it just gets kind of stupid.
The plot is typical: cop fails on the job, blames himself for a child's death; changes his profession to avoid unsettling memories, but then gets unwillingly drawn back into a similar scenario - this time feeling the need to redeem himself for his past errors.
Bruce has done this a few times in the past. In "The Sixth Sense" he was a shrink who let a kid down and took it upon himself not to make the same mistake again. In fact I believe "Mercury Rising" had the exact same opening as "Hostage."
In this flick Bruce is a hostage negotiator, and he gets involved in a memory-stirring hostage situation when three troubled kids take a rich accountant (Kevin Pollack) and his family hostage in his home. Things go haywire, cops wind up dead and the accountant's employees - a weird underground mob whose offshore accounts are managed by Pollack - decide to take Bruce's family hostage in exchange for him rescuing Pollack and/or retrieving a DVD full of encrypted files from Pollack's home.
Kind of a cool twist on a familiar plot, but there are way too many lapses of logic here. I dug the directorial style - but after a half-hour everyone seemed to get kind of lazy. The plot has a lot of holes in it and way too many long, rambling scenes that don't serve much of a purpose to the rest of the picture.
The ending in particular is what really left a bad taste in my mouth. It goes from suspension of disbelief to utter stupidity. Mars (Ben Foster in a devilish role) turns into Superman and is running around a burning house tossing Molotov cocktails at everyone, popping in and out of vents firing handguns (which never seem to need to be reloaded), getting stabbed and shot but never dying.
And then we get the heavy-handed religious symbolism - to quote another review, "It's like, please, baby, spare me!" Mars turns into Jesus and the accountant's daughter is the Virgin Mary. His death sequence has him take on the crucifixion stance as the daughter of the accountant stares on with a towel draped around her head. Hmm...
The film tries to handle way too many subplots, and I think that's the real problem. They all crash together at the end, and suddenly it feels like three or four different movies all going on at once. There's the plot with the cop who feels the need to redeem himself, the plot with the cop whose family has been taken hostage, the plot with the troubled kids, the plot with the hostage situation, the plot with the retrieval of the DVDs, the plot with Mars (halfway through the movie he suddenly becomes a major focus and Bruce begins studying old CCTV tape footage of him murdering a clerk, observing, "He's watching him die" - and from this point onwards the symbolism gets weird).
I'm all for suspension of disbelief but some of the stuff in this film is simply ridiculous.
That said, I was entertained and I thought the beginning of the film was excellent - it's just rather unfortunate that the rest of the duration wasn't up to par with the earlier moments.
But then it just gets kind of stupid.
The plot is typical: cop fails on the job, blames himself for a child's death; changes his profession to avoid unsettling memories, but then gets unwillingly drawn back into a similar scenario - this time feeling the need to redeem himself for his past errors.
Bruce has done this a few times in the past. In "The Sixth Sense" he was a shrink who let a kid down and took it upon himself not to make the same mistake again. In fact I believe "Mercury Rising" had the exact same opening as "Hostage."
In this flick Bruce is a hostage negotiator, and he gets involved in a memory-stirring hostage situation when three troubled kids take a rich accountant (Kevin Pollack) and his family hostage in his home. Things go haywire, cops wind up dead and the accountant's employees - a weird underground mob whose offshore accounts are managed by Pollack - decide to take Bruce's family hostage in exchange for him rescuing Pollack and/or retrieving a DVD full of encrypted files from Pollack's home.
Kind of a cool twist on a familiar plot, but there are way too many lapses of logic here. I dug the directorial style - but after a half-hour everyone seemed to get kind of lazy. The plot has a lot of holes in it and way too many long, rambling scenes that don't serve much of a purpose to the rest of the picture.
The ending in particular is what really left a bad taste in my mouth. It goes from suspension of disbelief to utter stupidity. Mars (Ben Foster in a devilish role) turns into Superman and is running around a burning house tossing Molotov cocktails at everyone, popping in and out of vents firing handguns (which never seem to need to be reloaded), getting stabbed and shot but never dying.
And then we get the heavy-handed religious symbolism - to quote another review, "It's like, please, baby, spare me!" Mars turns into Jesus and the accountant's daughter is the Virgin Mary. His death sequence has him take on the crucifixion stance as the daughter of the accountant stares on with a towel draped around her head. Hmm...
The film tries to handle way too many subplots, and I think that's the real problem. They all crash together at the end, and suddenly it feels like three or four different movies all going on at once. There's the plot with the cop who feels the need to redeem himself, the plot with the cop whose family has been taken hostage, the plot with the troubled kids, the plot with the hostage situation, the plot with the retrieval of the DVDs, the plot with Mars (halfway through the movie he suddenly becomes a major focus and Bruce begins studying old CCTV tape footage of him murdering a clerk, observing, "He's watching him die" - and from this point onwards the symbolism gets weird).
I'm all for suspension of disbelief but some of the stuff in this film is simply ridiculous.
That said, I was entertained and I thought the beginning of the film was excellent - it's just rather unfortunate that the rest of the duration wasn't up to par with the earlier moments.