The Negotiator (1998, R)

As Reviewed by James Brundage

Its been how long since I’ve seen something like this? Well over a year. After all, it was about when I moved here a year and a week or so ago when I last viewed my copy of Silence of the Lambs, and got down to the business of being challenged on a psychological level. Wait, no. I watched Heat a few weeks after that, and THAT is the last movie that even measures up to The Negotiator.

F.Gary Gray (director, Set it Off) was actually trying to match (in character chemistry and psychological suspense) Heat, the Michael Mann crime saga in which it was plainly stated that, in the game of cops and robbers, there are no bad guys. In this film, however, there ARE bad guys: just none of them are the main characters. Not to say they’re angels… no way. The film dances in the namesake of the director: the Gray.

The plot is simple nothing out of the ordinary that we haven’t seen: Clean Cop A (Samuel L. Jackson) is a star man on the force, but is still falsely accused of murder, so he tries to bring in Cop B (Kevin Spacey) to clear his name, while Cops C and D don’t believe him, and IAD Cop E (The final performance of J.T. Walsh) is downright psychotic about getting him pinned with the murder. One difference in this one, though: he decides to get nasty, screw having us sit through a length legal movie or the standard cop investigation, and takes four hostages in the IAD department in a federal building. (at last, DEVIATION FROM THE NORM!).

OK, down to the review. I went to see the movie at about 10, and, with movies that late, I sometimes end up just falling into that trance between asleep and awake that happens when you watch Nascar for 6 hours on end. Not this time, not this movie-- No way, no how. To put it in a tidbit sentence: The Negotiator is an edge of your seat psychological thriller, with razor sharp suspense, intense action, and enough raw thrill to let me quit coffee for a week (and with all the coffee and cappuccinos I drink, that’s one huge thrill.)

THIS is THE summer movie of the year. And it’s THE crime drama of the year (unless they come out with an LA Confidential sequel or adapt another Elmore Leonard, which somehow I doubt). And it’s THE cop movie of the year (unless above conditions are met). And it’s THE … well … you get the point. GO SEE IT.