Hostage is a 2005 action/thriller movie which was directed by Florent Emilio Siri. The film was based on a novel by Robert Crais, and was adapted for the screen by Doug Richardson.
Plot
Jeff Talley is a hostage negotiator in Los Angeles. A man is going crazy in a small house downtown and has a gun on his girlfriend and her son, (which is not his, but his cheating girlfriend’s). Jeff Talley has been watching the situation for a while, and eventually, Jeff hears three gunshots in the house. He runs inside through the baracaded door and finds them all dead. This leaves Talley emotionally scarred and wishes he could have saved the woman and her boy. Soon after, Jeff moves with his family to become police chief in Bristo Camino, a peaceful suburban hamlet in Ventura County, California.
One year after the incident that ended his career with the LAPD, Talley finds himself in yet another hostage situation. Two teenagers and their mysterious accomplice Mars Krupchek take hostage Walter Smith and his two young children in Smith’s house after a failed robbery attempt. Unwilling to put himself through yet another life-or-death situation, Talley hands authority over to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and leaves the scene.
Unfortunately for Talley, Smith has been laundering money for a mysterious criminal syndicate through offshore shell corporations. He was preparing to turn over a batch of important encrypted files (recorded on a DVD) when he was accidentally taken hostage. To protect such incriminating evidence from discovery, the syndicate arranges for Talley’s wife and daughter to be taken hostage, and forces him to return to the scene and stall for time until it can mobilize its own attack against Smith’s house.
Back at the scene, Talley learns that Mars is a serial killer, who could turn on the hostages and his own accomplices at any moment. The rest of the movie’s plot turns on whether Talley can save two families while fighting two separate groups of hostage-takers at the same time.
According to the movie’s official production notes, the movie’s plot is roughly the same as the novel; the main difference is that a complicated subplot involving the Mafia was removed and the ages of the first group of hostage-takers was lowered slightly. In the novel, Smith’s employer is Sonny Benza, a crime overlord whose influence reaches throughout the entire West Coast.
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