Hostage, a thriller directed by Florent Emilio Siri, is based on the 2001 book by Robert Crais. In the prologue, Jeff Talley (played by Bruce Willis), a seventeen-year LAPD veteran who has for ten years been the chief SWAT negotiator with gangsters holding hostages, botches a hostage situation and three persons die. Mortified by his failure, he next takes a position as Chief of Police in the mythical small Ventura County town of Bristo Camino. His police career has meant neglecting his wife Jane (played by Serena Scott Thomas) and daughter Amanda (played by Rumer Willis), who fears that they will divorce. Now, he is living at some distance from them but at least does not get involved in emotional episodes with them. One day, three teenagers in a beat-up pick-up truck spot sixteen-year-old Jennifer Smith (played by Michelle Horn), who has just shopped at a convenience story wearing a sexy outfit. When she sees them ogling, she gives then the figure and departs in an SUV for her home, a castlelike mountaintop structure with a security system that resembles Fort Knox. The trio follows her, hoping to hijack the SUV, just as Walter Smith (played by Kevin Pollak) is burning some important data inside the castle's office onto a CD, which is placed inside a Heaven Can Wait packet. When Mars Krupcheck (played by Ben Foster) and Dennis Kelly (played by Jonathan Tucker) easily gain entry to the compound despite the supposedly impregnable security system, they assault Walter and terrorize Jennifer, but eight-year-old Tommy (played by Jimmy Bennett) pushes a security panic button, and the local police department is summoned. Unaware that Krupcheck is psycho, Dennis's younger brother Kevin (played by Marshall Allman) walks into the house and unwillingly finds that he is in the middle of the hostage situation. Talley's small police staff lacks the resources to deal with the situation, so he asks the county for assistance, whereupon Talley becomes a bit player, but soon a van arrives with the initials FBI to take charge. However, the story is more complex. Walter Smith works for the mob, which in turn has kidnapped Amanda and Jane so that they can blackmail Talley into retrieving the CD; mob underlings come of the FBI van to attempt to locate the CD as well. Thus, Talley must free two families taken hostage before the bogus FBI agents. Inevitably, blood is spilled, and Talley will have to find a way to rescue his wife and daughter. The action is intense from start to finish. MH
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