'Hostage' a somewhat captivating thriller

Bruce Willis' latest attempt to breathe life into his once thriving career comes in the form of "Hostage." While better than his other offerings of late -- the dreaded "The Whole Ten Yards" and "Tears of the Sun" -- it's nowhere near the goodness that is the first and third "Die Hard" flicks, "Pulp Fiction," "Twelve Monkeys" and the M. Night Shyamalan double shot of "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable."\nHere, Willis stars as LAPD hostage negotiator Jeff Talley. In the first few minutes of the picture, as is par for the action movie course, everything goes awry. He's in the midst of talking down a suicidal/homicidal man with an itchy trigger finger. Lo and behold, the nutjob offs his wife, kid and himself. Talley, feeling immense amounts of grief and guilt, flees the city for a "safer" gig working as chief of police in the small Southern California suburb Bristo Camino. \nShortly into the new job, chaos rears its ugly head once more. A trio of troubled teenagers -- brothers Dennis and Kevin Kelly (Jonathan Tucker and Marshall Allman, respectively) and their freakazoid pal Mars (Ben Foster) -- take shady accountant Walter Smith (Kevin Pollack) and his children, teenaged temptress Jennifer (Michelle Horn) and twerpy tyke Tommy (Jimmy Bennett), hostage in their colossal compound hoping to jack the family Escalade. Wrong time, wrong place, fellas. Turns out Smith's cooking the books for the Mafia, and they'll do damned near anything to extract the evidence, including abducting Talley's wife (Serena Scott Thomas) and daughter (Willis' goofy-looking, real-life progeny Rumer) forcing his hand in procuring said incriminating materials.\n"Hostage," based on the potboiler novel by television writer Robert Crais, isn't particularly original. Anyone who's seen the film's trailer could finger it for the "Die Hard" meets "Panic Room" pastiche it most assuredly is. What damns the picture is also what makes it half-way watchable -- an inherent sense of darkness. A woman is shot in the back; a young boy in the throat. Headshots become the norm in a climactic Western-esque gunfight. A bevy of baddies are burnt to death via Molotov cocktails. Willis' smart-ass schtick has been stripped away. Foster's grass-smoking, goth heavy is gruesome to the nth degree, and looks as though he wants to be The Crow something fierce. This makes him one of the most effective villains in recent memory. \nFrench filmmaker Florent Emilio Siri, who cut his teeth directing "Splinter Cell" video games and the so-so "Assault on Precinct 13" rip-off "The Nest," captures the savagery stylistically. This dude has obviously rented a fair share of Alfred Hitchcock's oeuvre, as he spends enough time on a crane to qualify for union dues. Dramatic push-ins and pull-outs are also the norm. Siri even rigs cameras to his actors resulting in "flotation" shots resembling those seen in Spike Lee's works.\nAlthough handsomely mounted and acted, "Hostage" is ultimately just too icky and unsettling for its own good. Seeing children put in jeopardy is one thing, having an entire film rest its crux on such notions is mildly offensive.