I\u2019m sure plenty of iconic performances ran through people\u2019s heads when Bruce Willis, who has been diagnosed with the brain disorder known as aphasia, announced his retirement from acting<\/a>. His career-launching turn as wisecracking private eye David Addison on TV\u2019s Moonlighting<\/em>. His star-making turn as wisecracking cop\/action hero John McClane in Die Hard<\/em>. Hell, I even know people who dug him as the wisecracking, titular cat burglar in Hudson Hawk<\/em>. (Whaddup, Sean<\/a>?!) Of course, the man did serious work, giving stellar, dramatic performances in Terry Gilliam\u2019s 12 Monkeys<\/em> and M. Night Shyamalan\u2019s The Sixth Sense<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When I heard the retirement news, it got me thinking about one impressive, dramatic role he did long ago \u2014 in a Miramax film, coincidentally. But it\u2019s not the time he played double-crossing boxer Butch Coolidge in Quentin Tarantino\u2019s Pulp Fiction<\/em>. I\u2019m talking about his performance as a terrified police chief in the 2005 action thriller Hostage<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Willis\u2019s relationship with the brothers Weinstein was a limited one, mostly comprised of brief turns in Weinstein-produced movies directed by pals\/Weinstein star prot\u00e9g\u00e9s Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. After Fiction<\/em>, he took an uncredited role in Tarantino\u2019s segment of that anthology flop Four Rooms<\/em><\/a>. As for Rodriguez, he got Willis to appear in his adaptation of Frank Miller\u2019s Sin City<\/em> and contribute a cameo in Planet Terror<\/em> (aka one-half of the Rodriguez\/Tarantino double feature Grindhouse<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hostage<\/em> is the one-and-only Miramax production with Willis in the lead. And, unlike the Die Hard<\/em> movies<\/a>, where he played the role of smart-ass savior, shooting off at the lip while saving lives, Willis goes snark-free on this one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He\u2019s Jeff Talley, a lawman who has to save the lives of two families in one night. A former SWAT officer and hostage negotiator from LA, he moved his wife (Serena Scott Thomas \u2014 yes, Kristin\u2019s sister) and daughter (Rumer Willis \u2014 yes, Bruce\u2019s daughter) to a suburban, low-crime community after Talley failed to keep a deranged man from murdering himself and his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Crime goes way up one evening when a trio of young-punk hoodlums (Ben Foster, Jonathan Tucker and Marshall Allman) decide to slip into a mansion and steal a car from a wealthy, widowed accountant (Kevin Pollak) and his two kids (Jimmy Bennett, Michelle Horn). This soon turns into a hostage situation when one of the hoodlums starts shooting at cops responding to a security alarm. At first, Talley, still traumatized from losing that family, freely turns authority over to the county sheriff\u2019s department. But he soon has to regain control when a group of hooded figures (led by veteran tough guy Kim Coates, whom Willis memorably killed in The Last Boy Scout<\/em><\/a>) force him to go back and retrieve a DVD full of incriminating, encrypted files or they\u2019ll kill his<\/em> family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hostage<\/em> was basically an opportunity for Willis (who also serves as a producer) to show he can do action with a straight face. You won\u2019t see him shooting off one-liners while crawling through air vents. (A character does spend a lot of screen time in air vents \u2014 one of the accountant\u2019s kids.) He must\u2019ve figured we\u2019ve gotten so used to him being a badass smartass, he snapped up the rights to Robert Crais\u2019s 2001 novel of the same name, got Die Hard 2<\/em> screenwriter Doug Richardson to adapt it and recruited French filmmaker Florent Emilio Siri (who did the Assault on Precinct 13 <\/em>quasi-remake The Nest<\/em>) to put it all on film. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The fact that Willis plays someone more fearful than confident is what attracted him to the project. As he said in a BBC interview<\/a>, \u201cI’ve saved the world six or seven times now, so I think that audiences have expected me to win and save the day and this story was about a guy who doesn’t look like he’s going to win. It looks like he’s going to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Talley springs into action, spinning lies in order to keep the cops, the hoodlums and<\/em> the masked figures from completing their objectives, Willis quietly lets us know he\u2019s scared and shaken every step of the way. He plays Talley as someone whose steely, stoic face is continually trying not to break out into tears. Although Willis has had vulnerable moments in other action movies \u2014 who can forget this tearful scene from the first Hard<\/em>?<\/a> \u2014 Hostage<\/em> gave him the chance to be both brave and bruised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s unfortunate that the rest of the cast can\u2019t also get their range on. They\u2019re either badly written (the hoodlums in particular are your standard-issue dirtbags in way<\/em> over their heads, with Foster\u2019s homicidal weirdo being the most predictably deranged of the bunch) or barely written (Talley\u2019s wife and daughter are mainly there to be kidnapped\u2014 and that\u2019s it). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hostage<\/em> didn\u2019t turn out to be a big hit for Willis or Miramax. The reviews were mixed, with critics either appreciating its tense, B-movie thrills or slamming it for being lurid and implausible. Eventually, the $77 million flick only grossed $75 million back. And even though Willis returned to churning out bombastic blockbusters (including a couple more Hard<\/em> sequels) before spending his later years slumming in straight-to-video actioners \u2014 most likely in a declining cognitive state<\/a> \u2014 at least Hostage<\/em> proved that Bruce Willis could save the day without a smirk on his face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hostage is streaming on HBO Max<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/hostage2-1024x576.jpg\")
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