Hostage (DVD Screening)

(Spoilers)

Bruce Willis in a film called Hostage, I’m sure you can imagine what little persuasion I needed to buy this DVD! Bruce Willis quickly became one of my all time favourite action stars after I made my way through the Die Hard franchise last year but also due to his appearances in films such as Looper and Armageddon.  As a result of these efforts I was expecting to really enjoy this flick!

In short I really did, it had some fantastic moments but it also featured some quite silly ones too, that at times took away from what had been achieved. Lets start with the bad, unfortunately several of the actors included in this film were not great – thankfully these actors only made up the supporting cast and the main characters were portrayed well however a stronger supporting cast would have strengthened this film a lot.  Bruce Willis was his usual self although he doesn’t really go badass until the last 20-25 minutes of the film which is a shame although it is a welcome change in pace when it does come.  Hostage has another dimension to the film though due to the simultaneous hostage situation that is running through the story, this is really good and adds a whole new sense of suspense which is great to fill in calms in the story of the main hostage situation.

At first I thought the 3 youths that are the focus of the film, ‘running’ the hostage situation were a terrible choice for the villains of this film.  However when put in perspective with the other villains of the film behind the kidnapping of Willis’ family they are rubbish and inexperienced, making this fact okay because the other bad guys where so evil.  However the character Ben Foster plays, ‘Mars’ is just pure crazy and was actually a fantastic villain.  A certain point comes in this film where everything just kicks off, it starts off with Mars killing his fellow criminals and then it all just spirals from this.  Mars was actually a terrifying villain, he was genuinely scary thanks to a great performance from Foster and such a unpredictable character.  This was fantastic as it meant that no-ones fate was certain and it involved you in the film so much more than if Hostage had featured a nonthreatening villain which I thought was going to be the case at the start.

All in all Hostage is a great action movie, that fans of the genre will enjoy.  You will have to put up with some terrible acting in parts and other slow motion sequences that unfortunately don’t have the desired effect however what you get in terms of suspense, shocks and villains is far greater than these flaws.  One other point, I can see how films like Trespass and The Purge could have possible taken influence from this film or others like it, noticed some similarities but that didn’t bother me as I liked both of those films.

BIGGEST FLAW – Poor supporting cast

BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT – Chilling performance by Ben Foster

Rating – 8/10