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'Hostage': Overblown drama isn't any fun at all

Moviegoers will feel as trapped as any of the victims in Bruce Willis' dark and deadly "Hostage," a kind of dirge version of "Die Hard" minus Nakatomi Plaza, minus all the perfectly timed explosions and, most importantly, minus all the fun.

The moody "Hostage," with Willis as an emotionally rattled but still top-notch hostage negotiator, spends most of its time wailing in its own seriousness or slowing to a slo-mo crawl every other second.

Miramax Films 'Hostage' D+ The verdict: Unfortunately, it bears no resemblance to "Die Hard." Director: Florent Emilio Siri Starring: Bruce Willis, Jimmy Bennett, Jimmy Pinchak, Jonathan Tucker, Ben Foster Run time: 102 minutes Release date: March 11, 2005 Rating: R for strong graphic violence, profanity and some drug use See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer   -- Trailers require Quicktime Rate "Hostage":   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Once its foggy tale of a hostage situation inside a hostage situation finally begins its roiling boil, the whole thing implodes into a laughably nutty mixture of filmmaker preening, bizarre images recalling other films -- even the air-duct creature crawling in "Aliens" -- and anguish laid on so thick a Ginsu Knife couldn't cut it.

From the get-go, "Hostage" demonstrates how the whole enterprise is gonna tank.

Willis plays Jeff Talley, the hard-nosed, know-it-all L.A. hostage negotiator. We know he's tough and with-it because he combs his salt-and-pepper beard while playing phone footsie with a suicidal, gun-wielding freak who's holding captives, including a little boy, in a dilapidated house.

Things don't exactly come out OK. The grief of it is milked to death.

So we cut to the future. Which means Talley's got emotional baggage from the fumbled negotiation and is now police chief in an upscale suburb. His marriage is rocky, too.

Ultimately, a trio of young bad guys takes a monied family hostage on a whim in their swank, hillside house, and before Talley can say "hands up" a group of older and badder guys nabs his wife and kid, demanding he work out the first situation to their advantage -- or else.

Much of the drama is wrung so hard the film borders on the ridiculous. For instance, one female cop is shot and must crawl down a driveway to escape amid a fusillade of bullets and car crashes. She crawls. And crawls. And crawls.

In one of the film's looniest moments, one long-haired bad guy marches down a home's burning hallway -- in slo mo, of course -- flames licking at his heels and hair as his raised hands carry aloft two fiery Molotov cocktails.

Some might think it a bizarre, Christ-like image.

Me, I thought Creed's Scott Stapp had crashed the movie.

All this hyped-up drama is painted in washed-out, nearly colorless cinematography and stoked with a loud musical score that pulsates with the incessant pounding of a few piano keys.

The culprit here is Florent Emilio Siri, who directs this misguided $55 million enterprise.

He's the third Frenchman in recent memory to bungle a big Hollywood project. The other two are Mathieu Kassovitz, who fumbled "Gothika," and the singularly-named Pitof, who gagged up "Catwoman."

"Hostage" bears a strong resemblance to those films: entertainment by force of will, moviemaking by sledgehammer.