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Hostage (*******7/10)
Year: 2005
Genre: Action
Country: United States
Language: English
Starring: Bruce Willis, Kevin Pollak, Ben Foster, Jonathan Tucker, Marshall Allman, Kim Coates, Rumer Willis, Michelle Horn
Director: Florent Emilio Siri
Run time: 113 minutes
DVD distributor: Alliance Films
Hostage is a pretty regular, pretty average Bruce Willis action movie. Which means that it’s goddamn awesome. It’s kinda silly. Hostage negotiation movies usually are. But it isn’t quite as silly as The Negotiator, for example. It’s kinda fun, as Bruce Willis action movies tend to be, but it’s not quite as fun as Die Hard With A Vengeance. It’s just Bruce Willis being conflicted and tortured and badass for 108 minutes (plus credits). And that works for me.
The Lookout (*********9/10)
Year: 2007
Genre: Drama
Country: United States
Language: English
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Bruce McGill, Alberta Watson, Alex Borstein, Sergio Di Zio, David Huband, Isla Fisher, Carla Gugino
Eye candy: Isla Fisher, Carla Gugino
Director: Scott Frank
Run time: 102 minutes
DVD distributor: Alliance Films
The real gem in this double feature, out February 23rd from Alliance Films, is The Lookout. This film was terribly overlooked when it was released in 2007, and I really hope it gets watched now. This should have been the star-making performance for Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He should be the hottest young star in Hollywood right now, on the strength of this movie alone. Supporting roles in movies like Stop-Loss haven’t hurt (although movies like Killshot might have).
In The Lookout Gordon-Levitt gives a tour-de-force performance as a former high school hockey star whose dreams of glory were dashed by a car accident. The crash left him with a condition where he has no way of ordering things in his head. He has to keep notes with him to remember everyday, mundane things that most of us take for granted. His only close friend is an older blind man (Jeff Bridges). Their respective disabilities make them close, and their relationship is an interesting, compelling one.
Gordon-Levitt has a job as a custodian at a bank. That means he is in a position to help some bad guys rob the place, if only they can get to him. It proves to be relatively easy, as a femme fatale walks into his life and turns it upside down. Soon he is hanging out with her friends, who need only to reference his former glory to make him a willing accomplice. The scene where one of the creeps tells him that he was a few years older in high school, and he looked up to him is perfect.
It’s Gordon-Levitt’s reaction to praise such as this that makes his performance so flawless. You can see in his face that he would do anything to be looked upon the way he once was. He has mostly resigned himself to the fact that this will never be the case, but a small part of him will not let the dream die. And it’s that small part that is played upon by the bad guys, who know just what buttons to push.
The Lookout loses a little steam toward the end, with a climax that is a little bit contrived and overly clever, but it does little to detract from the rest of the movie, which rests almost entirely on the performances by Gordon-Levitt and Bridges. And The Lookout is an absolutely fabulous movie on the strength of those performances alone. Look for this bargain-priced double feature. The Lookout alone is a must for movie lovers.