Florent Siri's 2005 action/thriller Hostage was a bit of a sleeper. I think a lot of people expected crazy Matrix style action scenes and rapid fire editing but instead what they got was a clever and suspenseful film with good performances and an emphasis on the story as opposed to the gun play.

Bruce Willis plays Jeff Talley, a tough guy with a big heart (a real stretch for Willis there) who used to be a hostage negotiator who has since taken a job as the chief of police in a small California town after a young boy was killed on his last big job, shot to death by his crazed father.

Aside from the every day problems or marital stress with his wife and the issues commonly posed by his teenage daughter, Talley's also got to worry about work and about paying the bills. Little does he know how much more he'll have to worry about as this day moves on, however, when a gang of three thugs in a pick up truck decide to steal a wealthy man's SUV for kicks. The thugs follow the vehicle back to the man's house and when the cops show up before they can make a break for it, they knock the man out and hold his young boy and teenage daughter hostage. The police scramble to the scene but an officer is soon killed in the line of duty and it isn't long before the Feds show up and take control.

Talley is content to let the Feds handle the case until he finds out that the man who owns the house where this is all going down is an accountant named Walter Smith (Kevin Pollack) who has some ties to a crime ring who will stop at nothing to get some information hidden inside a DVD out of Smith's house before it's too late. To get their way, they kidnap Talley's wife and daughter and hold them as bait to get him to turn the situation to their favor, regardless of who gets killed in the process.

Hostage moves at a good pace – not too fast, not too slow – and it lets you get to know Willis' character enough to make him a sympathetic and believable hero. He gives one of the better performances I've seen from him and he does a good job with the tough guy parts as well as the more melancholy moments in the movie as well. Kevin Pollack is also quite good as Smith, and his character is a little more tricky. Despite the fact that we know he's been up to no good and is involved with some people he probably shouldn't be involved with, his interaction with his kids makes him easy to identify. Jimmy Bennett and Michelle Horn, who played his son and daughter respectively, are also very good and don't ever hit that level of annoying forced acting that so many younger performers unfortunately bring to the screen. The interplay between their characters and the three thugs who hold them hostage makes for an interesting dynamic and a worthy subplot that makes things a little more interesting as the story plays out.

Siri's direction is confident and assured and the cinematography from Italian photographer Giovanni Fiore Coltellacci is superb, doing a great job with the lighting and the shadows in the movie. The camera captures the action as well as it does the quieter, character driven moments and the movie is very well put together in terms of composition and color scheme. The editing is tight without being overbearing and the effects work and stunt work is refreshingly low key and realistic enough so as not to pull you out of the movie.

While the ending might be a little predictable and at times the film plays around with some cliches and minor stereotypes (the three thugs in particular… how many times to we need the 'bad teens' to look like they were part of the Trench Coat Mafia?) Hostage gets enough right in terms of visuals and storytelling to make for an entertaining thriller. Couple that with an great performance from Willis and you've got a movie worth watching.

Video:

Hostage gets a nice 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that presents the film in its original theatrical aspect ratio. The colors in the opening scene look a little washed out but this is an obvious stylistic choice on the part of the cinematographer and not a fault in the transfer and this effect does do a good job of letting the viewer feel the heat and the grit of the beginning of the film. After that, things look great. Color reproduction is dead on, the black levels stay deep and strong throughout and don't break up or pixelate at all. Flesh tones look nice and natural and there's a very revelatory level of detail present in both the foreground and the background of the picture. The only really noticeable flaw is some edge enhancement and some edge shimmering which is quite evident along the lines of the roads and along the rooftops of the houses seen throughout the movie. Other than that, the film looks very nice on DVD. There aren't any problems with print damage and only a slight hint of grain is present on the image.