Jennifer Conyers

Hostage [VHS] Blu-ray – not at theatrical aspect ratio – Regina A. Walter – Indiana
Since the movie is several years old, anyone considering this purchase would know if they like the film or if they do not. This review involves the Blu-Ray version. It has three major drawbacks. The first is that the release is remastered in the aspect ratio of 1:85. The DVD and theactrical aspect ratio is 2:35 thus about 20% of the right and left sides of the film have been cropped. This would lead one to believe that it was a version that was originally produced for HDTV. This theory is further supported by the fact that there are absolutely no bonus features on the disc….none whatsover. There is not even a start up menu screen. The film simply begins when put in the player. There are also audio-video sync problems throughout the film. The image quality is exceptional, but if you own the DVD, I would not upgrade in blu-ray, as you lose more that you gain.
: You get two hostage crises for the price of one in Hostage, an overwrought but otherwise involving thriller grounded by Bruce Willis’s solid lead performance. Making a dramatic pit-stop on his way to Die Hard 4, Willis plays a traumatized former Los Angeles hostage negotiator, now working as a nearly-divorced police chief in sleepy Ventura County, California. Willis suddenly finds himself amidst two potentially deadly stand-offs when a trio of hapless teenagers seize hostages in the fortress-like home of an accountant (Kevin Pollack) whose connections to organized crime result in Willis struggling to rescue his estranged wife and daughter, who are being held hostage by faceless thugs at an undisclosed location. Having directed two of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell video games, director Florent Siri brings plenty of slick, competent filmmaking to Willis’s desperate dilemma, and the film boasts a gritty, graphic style that draws attention away from implausible plot twists. The bothersome, over-the-top performances by the teenaged villains also slightly compromise this gloomy but emotionally gripping adaptation of Robert Crais’s novel, named as one of Amazon.com’s best books of 2001. –Jeff Shannon
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Hostage: A Novel Not A Hostage – Michael C. Semotan – Milwaukee, WI USA
Great purchase, no problems at all. Loved the “Hostage” audiobook and have read or listened to many Robert Crais novels. I listen to about 3 books/month and it was nice to put a face to the character. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys a great story. Crais has been writing for years and puts all the pieces in place, and some surprises too. James Daniels also does a great job in telling the story. After listening to many of his works, I can put a familiar voice to the words when I slow down to actually read a book by Crais.
: The bestselling author of Demolition Angeland L.A. Requiemreturns with his most intense and intricate thriller yet.

As the Los Angeles Times said, Robert Crais is “a crime writer operating at the top of his game.” His complex heroes and heroines, his mastery of noir atmosphere, and his brilliant, taut plots have catapulted him into the front rank of a new breed of thriller writers. Hostageproves his earlier success was no fluke. It’s an unstoppable read.

An ex-con with delusions of grandeur and his tagalong brother unwittingly team up with a psychopath one wrong word away from meltdown. When their late afternoon joyride turns into a random act of violence, they take a family hostage in the affluent bedroom community of Bristo Camino. Enter Chief of Police Jeff Talley, a stressed-out former LAPD SWAT negotiator who is hiding from his past. Plunged back into the high-pressure world that he desperately wants to forget, Talley soon learns that his nightmare has only begun.

The hostages are not who they seem, and the home contains secrets that even L.A.’s most lethal and volatile crime lord, Sonny Benza, fears. As Talley tries to hold himself together and save the people inside, the full weight of Benza’s wrath descends on him, putting the police chief and his own family at risk. Soon, all involved are held hostage by the exigencies of fate and the only one capable of diffusing the standoff is the least stable of them all.

Hostage is a blistering stand-alone thriller with superb characters in crisis, multistranded plotting, and pitch-perfect Southern California sensibility.

From the Hardcover edition. Robert Crais is the real thing: a writer who keeps topping himself. Last year, after eight popular books featuring private eye Elvis Cole (including L.A. Requiem and Voodoo River), he produced Demolition Angel, his first standalone suspense novel. Its complex, multidimensional hero was a damaged cop haunted by her past failures. It worked in that book, and it works even better in this one.

Jeff Talley, the police chief in a small Southern California town, still has nightmares about the young hostage who died when he made the wrong call in his previous job as a negotiator for an LAPD SWAT team. Now, three smalltime punks go on the run after a grocery store robbery and killing in Talley’s town. Soon his deputies have surrounded the house where the inept robbers have taken Walter Smith and his two children hostage, and Talley’s back in his worst dream again: until the county sheriff’s full-fledged SWAT team arrives and takes over, he has to negotiate for their lives.

Crais keeps the point of view moving from Talley to the punks to the hostages as the situation unfolds in the house and on the ground. Then he ratchets up the dramatic tension: there’s something in Walter Smith’s house that a ruthless Mob boss wants, and he’ll sacrifice anyone to get it–which puts Talley’s own family in danger. The action speeds to its climax with the velocity of a heat-seeking missile, which makes it almost criminal to slow down long enough to savor the great writing. Take this passage, from a scene when Talley’s face-to-face with the man who’s holding his own wife and daughter hostage:

Talley … had stepped into the Zone. It was a place of white noise where emotions reigned and reason was meager. Anger and rage were nonstop tickets; panic was an express. He had been all day coming to this, and here he was: the SWAT guys used to talk about it. You went to the Zone, you lost your edge. You’d lose your career; you’d get yourself killed, or, worse, somebody else.

Crais belongs in that tier of writers whose novelistic gifts transcend the thriller category–writers like Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, and James Lee Burke. Hostage is a breakout. –Jane Adams
Hostage: A Novel

• The Two Minute Rule
• Demolition Angel
• The Forgotten Man: A Novel
• Chasing Darkness: An Elvis Cole Novel
• The Last Detective: A Novel

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