Willis plays a man with a past whose nightmare returns when a hostage drama reopens old wounds, blah, blah, blah...
Comment
03/11/05
Hostage (2005)
35
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:152
Fresh:53
Rotten:99
Average Rating:5/10
Consensus: Grisly and cliched, audiences may feel they're being held Hostage.
Synopsis: This well-made thriller harkens back to the gritty crime films of the 1970s. Bruce Willis plays Jeff Talley, a traumatized ex-LAPD hostage negotiator whose new career as small town sheriff doesn't... [More]
Starring: Bruce Willis, Kevin Pollak, Jonathan Tucker, Serena Scott Thomas
Director: Florent Emilio Siri
Reviews for Hostage
Willis wears the character like an old glove; he's a decent, no-nonsense character torn by the threat to his family but prepared to get the job done.
03/11/05
This just represents one more notch down on Willis' foundering career.
03/11/05
This is, in the final analysis, just another Bruce Willis Movie, albeit one that makes us think a bit more than usual and maybe hope a little harder that all those bullets and explosions will be put to good use.
03/11/05
...a nerve-shredding yarn ... While the ending can't completely sabotage the movie, it certainly doesn't enhance it.
03/11/05
Returns again and again to the scenes built around the threat of a groped or abused child, and pulls still a third teen out of its hat for a gun-to-the-head finale.
03/11/05
If it doesn't wholly succeed, at least it fails in an interesting way.
03/11/05
The result is a tough but frightened guy -- someone who can kick down a door, then burst into tears when he finds a dead body inside. Willis isn't playing a hero; he's playing a man.
03/11/05
The writing and direction are simplistic.
03/11/05
The movie doesn't spend much time on details or characterization, especially of its nonessential female characters (which is to say all of them).
03/11/05
The movie is breathlessly paced, fiendishly constructed and generally involving.
03/11/05
Takes a turn for the worse after its first half-hour, morphing into an overstuffed exercise in gore and stupidity that will leave your ears ringing and your eyes rubbed raw from disbelief.
03/11/05
It's a full-on adrenaline feature.
03/11/05
Doug Richardson's script is as riddled with plot holes as Pollak's house is with bullets.
03/11/05
Tuned in to current politics, narrating the failure of isolationism, as the men imagine can lock themselves up apart from the world.
03/11/05
Beyond the cliches, there's something deeply offensive about the way Hostage exploits our empathy for children in peril.
03/11/05
The film quickly collapses into incoherence with a barrage of bullets, Molotov cocktails and the arrival of a SWAT team.
03/11/05
Hostage” plays so much to Willis’ strengths that it could have been called Die Hard 4: Die Even Harder.”
03/11/05
A well-intended but perfunctorily overblown feature produced by and starring Bruce Willis, whose emotionally raw performance is the film's saving grace.
03/11/05
By the time Willis's character saves this considerably long day, it's filmgoers who will no doubt feel like prisoners.
03/11/05
Latest News for Hostage
December 27, 2006:
Foster a Vampire Groupie for "30 Days of Night"
After playing troubled, goth-influenced teens in projects like "Six Feet Under" and "Hostage," it's about time Ben Foster just went right to the vampires. In... More...
March 02, 2006:
Critical Consensus: A Swinging "Party," A Sweet and Sour "16"
This week's wide releases will take us on a journey. We'll walk a couple blocks ("16 Blocks," "Dave Chappelle's Block Party"), take a dip in the ocean... More...
July 18, 2005:
Ben Foster Will Spread His Wings for "X-Men 3"
Variety indicates that Ben Foster, best known for work in movies like "The Punisher" and "Hostage," will play the role of Warren Worthington III (a.k.a.... More...
June 17, 2005:
A Lot More Actors Climb Aboard the "Poseidon"
Last week we announced that Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, and Emmy Rossum had been signed to star in Wolfgang Petersen's remake of "The Poseidon Adventure," but The... More...
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