Review: Hostage (2002)

Hostage (2002) Review by Sir Bob Geldof.

And now for something completely different...

Winner of the 2002 Los Angeles Short Film Festival "Best Action Short" award, Hostage is an eight and a half minute masterpiece from (now legend status) director John Woo that is being pushed at www.bmwfilms.com to promote their new Z4 vehicle.

Hostage crams so much in to it's incredibly short running time that by the end of the experience, you are left feeling nothing short of breathless as to what you have just seen. It's a movie that troubled me too though, it was so good and so well made that as the final credits rolled, i was left wishing that this was actually a full-length feature. Hence a score of 8/10.

The movie delves straight to the heart of the action and follows our hero, simply named 'The Driver', played by Clive Owen (The Bourne Identity, Gosford Park, Bad Boys) trying to rescue a kidnapped girl who is trapped in the trunk of a car that is sinking in the river downtown. 'The Driver' is in contact with the girl the whole time by cellphone as she struggles to stay alive with water seeping in to the trunk every second as the car struggles to stay afloat.

'The Driver' has had a tip-off where 'The Kidnapper' is hiding. Only he can provide the answer to the missing girls' location, but to do this, he has asked for a ransom of $5million. This is where we join our hero as he locates 'The Kidnapper' and is about to confront him...

Hostage is stunning to look at. Woo uses some breathtaking photography, and one scene in particular where we see the Z4 speeding along the bridge across the city is a work of sheer genius. The acting is top-class too. The whole cast really sink their teeth in to their respective roles and pull off some superb performances. All this is complimented by some incredibly tight editing and a really meaty, thumping orchestral score. Hostage is one very tidy little package.

To sum up i'll finish by telling you this; I enjoyed this movie so much, i've converted the WMV file to Mpeg and i'm watching it on my DVD Player.

Hostage is brilliant, it's just a shame it's not a full-length feature.

Final Score: 8/10 ''Where is she?''


http://us.imdb.com/Title?0338111

Click here to WATCH the movie NOW!

Last edited by Mystic Slippers on 12-29-2002 at 04:57 PM

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hell, I converted it to svcd and watched it. great.

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umm.. yeah all these films are great.... the one john woo directed was amazing.. won awards even

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Grabbed the whole 1st and 2nd series of 'The Hire', great shorts, planning to make em into SVCD's with menus et al.

One prob tho, in season one, 'The Follow' isnt available for download anymore , anyone have it or an alternative source to download it?

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