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80Made with energetic flair and no small dose of violence, mercifully handled with discretion, Hostage exemplifies taut, confident filmmaking.
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75The mechanics of the final showdown are unexpected and yet show an undeniable logic, and are sold by the acting skills of Willis and Pollak.
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75Hostage has suspense and momentum.
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75My new theory is that Willis' own aesthetic soul is more old-world than he knows, and that he works best with directors who either are (Luc Besson) or might as well be (M. Night Shyamalan) European.
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70If Hostage looks a lot like a state-of-the-art French "policier" minus the pesky subtitles, the effect is purely intentional.
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70The movie isn't particularly tasteful or finely crafted -- but it grabs you by the jugular, and only during an overcooked climax does it finally relax its grip.
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67Full of small, weird moments.
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63Good action movies live on style and excitement. But they also need credibility, and in Hostage, ALMOST a good genre piece, plausibility keeps getting slaughtered.
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63Hostage is really about sleek Bruce - buff, bald and clean-shaven - as he goes to town on two sets of assailants.
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63On the plus side, bloated narratives make for a busy action star, and Bruce is quite the workaholic on this outing, clearly eager to rekindle memories of his "Die Hard" glory days.
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63Willis, who'll turn 50 a week from Saturday, has this kind of hero down pat. He may never again get or demand the complicated dramatic roles I think he could handle, but he's well-cast.
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60Right from the intriguing opening sequence, which hints at the bleakness which envelops the movie, Willis' Talley is an interesting character.
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60Certainly delivers violence and heroics, but not in a way everyone is going to enjoy -- it's brutal and harrowing.
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60What sends this initially tense thriller over the precipice is a plot scheme that never knows when enough is enough.
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60Brainlessly efficient action thriller.
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58There's a gripping thriller between the gaps in logic. Director Florent Siri has a tough style and an unforgiving attitude, but it drowns in the queasy blood lust.
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50The action is dynamically filmed and Willis is at his best. Suspense is soon hijacked by outright gore and grisliness, though.
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50From the first strains of its overly dramatic, self-important score -- come on, this is not by any stretch of the imagination "Citizen Kane."
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50It's a B-flick all the way, but it has no pretensions to the contrary, and that's some kind of refreshing.
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50Especially discomfiting is the stream of kids in peril.
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50By the time the film escalates into a suitably ridiculous Grand Guignol finale, all connection to reality has been severed.
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40The amazing thing is how dull a movie crawling with gunfire, psycho tantrums and stuff blowing up can be when you just don't care what happens to anyone.
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40Director Siri has a stylish eye that makes this film resemble a film noir outing, but the script (by Doug Richardson) is at first routine before growing increasingly outlandish.
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40Bruce looks hot and underplays handsomely as always, but Hostage is a steaming pile of siege clichés and screaming unlikelihoods.
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38Beyond the cliches, there's something deeply offensive about the way Hostage exploits our empathy for children in peril.
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38An unrelenting assault on the brain and eardrums.
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30The movie as a whole is nonsensical. And long. And slow. And head-poundingly loud as it culminates in slavering horror.
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30It doesn't satisfy in the way a good thriller ought to.
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30But by the time Willis's character saves this considerably long day, it's filmgoers who will no doubt feel like prisoners, as a movie that promises to be a taut nail-biter devolves into the kind of silly, overblown climax parodied so beautifully by Robert Altman in "The Player."
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25Take a tired formula...Stir with a director, Florent Siri, who has no shame about stealing every sadistic suspense trick from the Die Hard series. Serve to a gullible audience willing to pay top dollar for secondhand goods.
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25Hostage may well be the first action flick cited both for child abuse and audience abuse. In a singularly sadistic and degrading way it has something to offend everyone.
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25This is a half-hearted, derivative action film with not a single honest artistic impulse behind it.
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10More 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's fading career as an action hero.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 24 out of 34
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Mixed: 7 out of 34
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Negative: 3 out of 34
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DarthM.10
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FrankO.5