This film starts off good, and by the start I mean the opening credits. The innovative credits drew me in and I thought I was going to see a cool S.W.A.T. vs. young punks holed up in a fortress-like mansion movie. But after the credits we descend into standard-issue fare with Willis overdoing the acting as he bungles a hostage situation as a big-time LAPD negotiator. With his unkempt appearance and ridiculous messiah-like overacting, Willis is a joke.
Fast forward to the present day where Willis is a Chief of Police in "no-crime Mondays, low-crime Tuesdays" suburbia and the real story starts. Three no-good youths in a beater truck spot a Cadillac Escalade, rant about "rich people" (Escalade=rich people? not in LA, where this movie takes place), and decide to steal the car by breaking into the drivers' fortress mansion high-up in the canyon areas of greater Los Angeles. Things go wrong and the Escalade's driver, teen daughter and young son are held hostage by the violent and unpredictable boys, but not before the silent alarm gets activated by the resourceful son and Willis re-enters the picture.
Unforntuately, with Willis back in the picture we aren't allowed to have a straight-forward hostage movie and we're presented with a "twist" as Willis' family is also taken hostage, by a shadowy group intent on getting their hands on a disk of off-shore account numbers. The problem: the disk belongs to the Escalade driver (Kevin Pollak), he's unconscious and may die, and nobody knows where this disk is hidden. Willis has to get the disk by any means possible, even if it means violating every hostage negotiator rule, which he does with impunity.
This set-up is what destroys the movie. It's so implausible--first, that a Chief of Police and veteran hostage negotiator would fail to let other law enforcement aware of the situation and, secondly, that the other law enforcement agencies who come into the picture would allow a raving lunatic like Willis to behave as he does and control the scene. In any real hostage situation, Willis would have been instantly removed from the scene and taken to a hospital for a mental eval, regardless of his "rank." And the idea that a bunk of black-clad, hooded FBI tactical HRT members would be able to bust into a hostage situation and assume command with little resistance from a fairly large sheriff's department is ridiculous.
The best actor is this movie is the house--a fortress-like mansion built up next to the face of a cliff and outfitted with amazing high-tech security. (But not high-tech enough to stop three loser teens from climbing the fence and entering the home unnoticed!) The best scenes involve the young son scurrying around unnoticed in the air ducts, which gives him a fly-on-the-wall view of the goings on of the trio in the home's many rooms. If the film had centered on the fortress and dealt with the family's plight and their response to their situation (I liked the Stockholm syndrome-like response of the teen daughter to the creepy sexual advances made by the most disturbed of the trio), the film may have resonated more. Instead, we got a bifurcated plot that never really engages the viewer.
Fast forward to the present day where Willis is a Chief of Police in "no-crime Mondays, low-crime Tuesdays" suburbia and the real story starts. Three no-good youths in a beater truck spot a Cadillac Escalade, rant about "rich people" (Escalade=rich people? not in LA, where this movie takes place), and decide to steal the car by breaking into the drivers' fortress mansion high-up in the canyon areas of greater Los Angeles. Things go wrong and the Escalade's driver, teen daughter and young son are held hostage by the violent and unpredictable boys, but not before the silent alarm gets activated by the resourceful son and Willis re-enters the picture.
Unforntuately, with Willis back in the picture we aren't allowed to have a straight-forward hostage movie and we're presented with a "twist" as Willis' family is also taken hostage, by a shadowy group intent on getting their hands on a disk of off-shore account numbers. The problem: the disk belongs to the Escalade driver (Kevin Pollak), he's unconscious and may die, and nobody knows where this disk is hidden. Willis has to get the disk by any means possible, even if it means violating every hostage negotiator rule, which he does with impunity.
This set-up is what destroys the movie. It's so implausible--first, that a Chief of Police and veteran hostage negotiator would fail to let other law enforcement aware of the situation and, secondly, that the other law enforcement agencies who come into the picture would allow a raving lunatic like Willis to behave as he does and control the scene. In any real hostage situation, Willis would have been instantly removed from the scene and taken to a hospital for a mental eval, regardless of his "rank." And the idea that a bunk of black-clad, hooded FBI tactical HRT members would be able to bust into a hostage situation and assume command with little resistance from a fairly large sheriff's department is ridiculous.
The best actor is this movie is the house--a fortress-like mansion built up next to the face of a cliff and outfitted with amazing high-tech security. (But not high-tech enough to stop three loser teens from climbing the fence and entering the home unnoticed!) The best scenes involve the young son scurrying around unnoticed in the air ducts, which gives him a fly-on-the-wall view of the goings on of the trio in the home's many rooms. If the film had centered on the fortress and dealt with the family's plight and their response to their situation (I liked the Stockholm syndrome-like response of the teen daughter to the creepy sexual advances made by the most disturbed of the trio), the film may have resonated more. Instead, we got a bifurcated plot that never really engages the viewer.