6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.2 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.2 |
Devastated by an unspeakable tragedy while on the job as a hostage negotiator for the LAPD, Jeff Tally resigns and accepts a low-profile job as the chief of police in the sleepy town of Bristo Camino in Ventura County. On a slow Monday morning Talley's job becomes anything but quiet and sets him on a course that could change not only his professional but personal life forever. When three delinquent teenagers follow a family home, intending to steal their car, they get more than they bargained for. The trio finds themselves trapped in a multi-million dollar compound on the outskirts of town with no way of escape. Panicked, they take the family hostage, placing Talley in a situation he never wanted to face again.
Starring: Bruce Willis, Kevin Pollak, Jimmy Bennett, Michelle Horn, Ben FosterThriller | 100% |
Crime | 63% |
Action | 53% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English, English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
It’s never a good sign when the opening credits sequence keeps cropping up in memory as the coolest thing about a film. Hostage’s opening gambit is a wonderful, graphic-novel inspired riot of grainy whites and gorgeous blacks with huge swaths of red slathered across various photo realistic depictions of houses and landscapes where the names of the actors and crew are literally part of the scenery. Enjoy that coolness while it lasts, because once the actual film starts, silly melodramatics replace anything approaching logical consistency, and star Bruce Willis, seemingly wanting to simultaneously be a big action hero and an Actor (capital A, please), emotes until the roof really does cave in, to not much avail. Hostage is a big, extremely slick entertainment that is undeniably exciting, but it’s also a cheat, a film that relies on solid directorial technique rather than coherent writing. The film’s premise is so incredibly ludicrous that any attempt to wrench anything approaching verisimilitude from it is laughable at best, lamentable at worst. Hostage premiered in 2005 virtually simultaneously with another Willis effort, Sin City, and it’s remarkable that Hostage’s first sequence is eerily similar to the Willis segment of Sin City. Hostage, like the Miller-Rodriguez-Tarantino hybrid, finds Willis desperately attempting to save an endangered child from the hands of a madman, in this case the poor kid’s deranged father. Willis plays hostage negotiator Jeff Talley, who in the opening shot doesn’t exactly seem to be taking his job all that seriously: he’s splayed out flat on his back on a rooftop combing his beard as he attempts to get the crazed gunman to release both the boy and the boy’s mother, all three of whom are holed up in a ramshackle bungalow a few feet from the rooftop where a coterie of snipers are encamped. Let’s just say that the scenario doesn’t exactly end well, giving us our Damaged Hero, so necessary in films of this ilk which seek to shorthand actual character development with some pseudo-tragedy early on from which they desperately need to escape in order to find healing.
Hostage arrives on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Director Florent Siri and Director of Photography Giovanni Fiore Coltellacci go for an intentionally stylized look which this Blu-ray largely reproduces to a tee. As is so common in films from the mid-1990's on, the image is desaturated at times and at others filtered toward the blue or yellow ends of the spectrum. A lot of this film plays out at night, and black levels are solid, though crush is evident in some of the darkest sequences. There's one really egregious bit of aliasing in those opening credits mentioned above—keep your eyes on the power poles early in the sequence. Otherwise, though, this is a very sharp and appealing transfer that boasts excellent (if sometimes oddly filtered) color that is very well saturated, abundant fine detail and a very clean and invigorating look.
Hostage's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is one of the most sonically bombastic mixes in recent memory, one which should give any audiophile's home theater system a good workout. LFE is omnipresent in this film, from the usual suspects like rapid gunfire, but also from some judiciously used sound effects and score choices which keep the viewer on edge, if subliminally. Surround activity is very good and very forceful at times, with lots of panning effects (listen for the helicopters which dot the soundfield throughout the film) and good use of side and rear channels. Fidelity is very strong with incredible dynamic range. Dialogue is always easy to hear and is very well mixed in an often times extremely busy sonic array. This is one film where you may want to start with your volume control set a little lower than you usually do, for Hostage presents an extremely aggressive use of lossless audio.
Hostage simply has too much going on to ever maintain decent focus. The viewer is torn between caring about the Smiths and caring about the Talleys and ultimately ends up caring about neither. By far the best part of this film is the directorial craft Siri brings to it, investing a typical paint by numbers thriller like this with the occasional Art House flourish that at least stylistically sets this film apart from a lot of its generic ilk. This Blu-ray looks and sounds fantastic, so if you're a fan of the film or of Willis, this Blu-ray is certainly recommended. The public at large should probably consider a rental before investing in a permanent collection copy.
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1973
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