Hard as it is to believe, almost five years have passed since Bruce Willis' last hit, 2000's \Unbreakable."" Still, with Arnold going to politics and Sly going straight to video, Willis is really the last of his generation's action men to hang onto star status. But with the muddled ""Hostage,"" Willis demonstrates once again just how hard it is to suit an action flick to his talents and just how long it's been since anyone got it right.
""Hostage"" stars Willis as Jeff Talley, a star Los Angeles hostage negotiator who moves on to head a small-town police department after a failed negotiation leads to a child's death. Now in a quiet California enclave, Willis deals with a dramatic home life, but very little on the crime-fighting front.
This changes when a bungled car theft leads a trio of rough teenagers to hold an ostentatious businessman (Kevin Pollack) captive, along with his two children, in his elaborate home. Talley is forced to negotiate when a shadowy criminal organization with ties to the hostage businessman kidnaps Talley's family and orders him to retrieve a valuable mystery item from the fortress-like house or lose his wife and child.
What drags ""Hostage"" down more than anything is the unholy marriage of befuddling complexity and even more befuddling simplicity. The whole situation is predicated on the spontaneous decision by three teenagers to follow another driver to his house, try to steal his car, and then inexplicably decide to enter the house. Inevitably, they lose control of the situation and turn to omni-directional violence and hostage-taking as a defensive result. And, as we learned from ""National Treasure,"" there is very little entertainment value in stupid crimes committed by stupid criminals, let alone at this small of a scale.
The real shame in all of this is that it is readily apparent how many better movies could have been made from the same set-up. Smarter initial assailants could have made better foes for the larger criminal syndicate. Or focusing on the tense interactions between two of the teenagers, who are brothers, could have been interesting.
There is even a surprisingly cute story element of Willis communicating with the hostage businessman's young son, who knows how to stealthily navigate the house's crawl space. The industrious little boy could have been the focal point of a nifty little family-friendly hostage movie.
But instead of picking one direction and fleshing it out, screenwriter Doug Richardson (""Die Hard 2"") and veteran video game director Florent Emilio Siri chose a little bit of everything. The end result is an unmanageable ensemble of dead-end narratives and missed opportunities.
Like in 2003's ""Tears of the Sun,"" Willis is stuck in a vehicle with no room for a sense of humor, which squanders his greatest asset as a leading man. It has been so long since Willis had a proper mix of action and comedy to work with that it's hard to imagine he will still have his A-game left if and when the fourth ""Die Hard"" movie is made.
But for now, ""Hostage"" is all we have, and it's not really terrible. ""Hostage"" is a strictly mediocre movie that could have been solid. Instead, it arrives as an overwrought dud with marginal appeal, serving mostly to remind us of just how long-departed Willis' best work is.
