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Practice doesn't always make perfect

By Stephen Holden
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK
Friday, Apr 28, 2006, Page 16

For Bruce Willis, the mold has been set and the type has been cast. PHOTOS COURTESY OFGROUP POAER

More than sad, it's slightly sickening to consider the technology, talent and know-how squandered on Hostage, a pile of blood-soaked toxic waste dumped onto the screen in an attempt to salvage Bruce Willis' fading career as an action hero.

His character, Jeff Talley, is a guilt-stricken former hostage negotiator for the Los Angeles Police Department doing penance in the sticks after a botched stakeout resulted in the death of a little boy. As the new chief of police in a low-crime Southern California town, Jeff has plenty of time to twiddle his thumbs and sulk about his troubled marriage. The star runs the gamut from hard-boiled to softhearted as he struts his familiar persona of the sensitive action hero and misty-eyed rescuer of tots.

The movie, directed by Florent Siri, opens with the stakeout that undid Jeff. The old Jeff Talley was a swaggering hippie cop with thinning hair and an unsightly salt-and-pepper beard. The new, streamlined version has a shaved head that gleams like a torpedo and a buff torso the camera goes out of its way to ogle.

Most of the action is set in and around the cliff-hugging Southern California mansion of Walter Smith (Kevin Pollak), a crooked, book-cooking corporate accountant with two children, who keeps his dirty secrets and offshore account numbers in a DVD of Heaven Can Wait. Outfitted with video surveillance, searchlights, secret passageways and crashing steel gates that turn the place into a sealed bunker at the first sign of invasion, this architectural monstrosity is in dire need of demolition. And when Walter's pricey hellhole eventually succumbs to Molotov cocktails, your impulse is to cheer.

Film Notes: Hostage Directed by: Florent Siri Starring: Bruce Willis (Jeff Talley), Kevin Pollak (Walter Smith), Ben Foster (Mars Krupcheck), Michelle Horn (Jennifer Smith), Jimmy Bennett (Tommy Smith) and Rumer Willis (Amanda Talley) Running time: 113 minutes Taiwan Release: Today

But that's the only thing worth applauding in this senseless mess of a film. Hostage is so desperate to pack the most R-rated carnage it can squeeze into 113 minutes that it deploys two unrelated gangs to accomplish that destruction. After Walter's sassy daughter, Jennifer (Michelle Horn), gestures contemptuously at a carload of drooling teenage boys, this three-man answer to the Manson family visits her house planning to steal an SUV. But when the police arrive, the boys get jumpy and shoot a female officer to death. Jeff steps in around the time they demand a helicopter to transport them to safety.

Meanwhile, a band of mysterious gangsters intent on getting that DVD kidnaps Jeff's wife and daughter and threatens to execute them unless he delivers the disc in person. The omniscient gang leader somehow knows all about Jeff's previous life.

Rather than mesh, the two stories collide head-on. Because the film devotes more energy to the punks than to the gangsters, the kidnapping subplot feels like an afterthought crudely shoehorned into the movie. All it accomplishes is to further gum up an already clogged garbage disposal.

As the teenagers panic, the craziest one, Mars (Ben Foster), becomes the movie's designated nut case, slaughtering and setting fire to everyone and everything in sight. It's sad to see Foster, who plays Russell, the flaky art student on HBO's Six Feet Under, reduced to emptying his skimpy arsenal of psychopathic shtick.

Ever since The Sixth Sense, Willis has been the best on-screen buddy and surrogate dad a lonely little boy could ever want. Here the star is given two on whom to work his daddy magic. The first one dies, but the second, Walter's young son, Tommy (Jimmy Bennett), is a sresourceful little bundle of courage, whose pluck and obedience to Jeff's life-saving instructions deserve several tear-stained merit badges. Under Jeff's tutelage, the scared little boy becomes a brave little man.
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