It's being promoted as Die Hard 3.5, but Bruce Willis's action flick, Hostage, is much more than a little warmup to the much-hyped Die Hard 4.
Hostage is an urban thriller that recalls such good-people-in-peril classics as Wait Until Dark, Lady in a Cage and The Panic Room.
Widower businessperson Walter Smith (Kevin Pollak) enters his hillside fortress with his punk-wannabe daughter Jennifer (Michelle Horn) and his young son Tommy (Jimmy Bennett).
It's just another day and another couple million for Walter, who is an accountant for an underworld organization.
Neither the three thugs who break into Walter's house nor Walter's children have any idea how much money is in the duffel bags in his study just waiting to be picked up by the mob's bag man.
The thugs just want to steal Walter's SUV, except that things go horribly wrong when little Tommy hits the silent alarm button and the local cops come to check out the house.
Soon Walter is lying unconscious from a blow to his head, a wounded cop is dragging herself down the driveway and the thugs have activated the major security system that locks them in and the rest of the world out.
Enter Jeff Talley (Willis), a former Los Angeles hostage negotiator who has retired to this California bedroom community because it is famously crime-free.
In a riveting opening sequence, the audience sees why Talley has abandoned his old job.
Director Florent Emilio Siri plunges us into the film's harrowing action at record speed as Talley fails to stop a deranged husband from killing his wife and son.
It's just a prelude to what happens in the Smith home, as psychopath and career criminal Mars (Ben Foster) manipulates his hostages and his fellow criminals, brothers Dennis (Jonathan Tucker) and Kevin (Marshall Allman).
It's genuinely creepy thrills as the tension and menace mount.
Foster, Tucker and Allman are pure pent-up fury and Horn shows great strength as the girl who refuses to be a victim.
Talley is forced to take command of the situation when the mobsters kidnap his wife (Serena Scott Thomas) and daughter (Willis's real-life daughter, Rumer Willis).
The trick with Hostage is that Talley and little Tommy become allies when they link up through a cell phone.
Dennis is crazed and terrified, Kevin desperate to stop the violence from escalating and Mars is enjoying the power and notoriety thrust upon him.
It's a dangerous combination for everyone.
Eventually the mob henchmen arrive. They remain a faceless terror because they never remove their black hoods.
This is a character Willis can conceivably do in his sleep, but he doesn't. He shows all the cracks in Talley's emotional armour, but he also shows how cunning and resourceful the man can be when pushed past his limits.
Hostage takes off like a rocket and never loses its momentum, delivering a series of escalating climaxes worthy of its dramatic opening.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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