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Samuel L. Jackson is Danny Roman, one of the top negotiators in the Chicago Police Department. After his partner is killed while apparently investigating a possible case of corruption by the Police Department itself. Before long, Danny is set up in the murder and faces prison time, but before Internal Affairs and the main agent in charge Terence Niebaum (JT Walsh) can take action, Danny shows up to confront Niebaum and ends up taking him and 3 other people hostage, including Commander Grant Frost (Ron Rifkin), who’s one of Danny’s longtime friends. Roman knows he got set up, and soon begins to plan his strategy in order to prove his innocence and at the same time, demands the Police to call up Chris Sabian (Kevin Spacey), another Chicago PD negotiator with an impeccable background, to mediate with him as the Police, and the men behind the scam plot to get into the building to execute their own respective objectives.

As stated, the main reason why this film works is the cast. Everyone is game here, but of course, the majority of the praise will go to both Jackson and Spacey. Both have immediate screen presences respectively, and it’s hard not to care for them. Both men however are very ambiguous, and ambitious too. They know exactly what they want and the tension simply goes up and up whenever both are facing each other, and outwitting each other into a mistake so that either one can get an advantage for their own causes. That is usually what a negotiator does when dealing with a hostage situation, but put 2 of them on opposite sides, and sparks surely fly. At the same time however, Director F.Gary Gray never forgets that we ultimately must care for these two characters, with Roman fighting the odds and his frustration to clear his name, and Sabian having to connect the dots and save the hostages, while at the same time, keep the entire army of cops and FBI agents from crashing into the building.

The supporting players are just as great although we get a bit of a mishmash here, with Ron Rifkin a solid character with an insight revealed later on, David Morse chews scenery as Roman’s at-odds fellow SWAT man Commander Beck, John Spencer and Regina Taylor as Roman’s Commander and wife respectively are given nothing to work with, but nevertheless acquit themselves as much as they can. The big surprise was Paul Giamatti, as one of the hostages named Rudy Timmons, coming off as a nerdy and nervous geek that has gone to the bad side, with crushing luck all the time. He was fun to watch and is given some really funny as hell one-liners to which he doesn’t waste.

I want to save a paragraph for the late great JT Walsh as the evil-appearing Niebaum. Walsh has always been one of my favorite character actors ever since I saw him in the Kurt Russell thriller Breakdown; his somber look and low voice were his trademarks, giving you the impression that he’s got something to hide, or that he’s mighty intelligent and knows something you don’t, and won’t let you know. He’s memorable here as the focal point of Roman’s impromptu investigation and isn’t afraid of going one on one with Jackson. I was truly saddened when he died, mainly because he was finally getting the recognition he deserved and more importantly, he was slowly but surely breaking free from his typecasting of evil roles, and it’s just too bad that objective wasn’t realized.

Here’s to you JT; we movie buffs that know your work certainly won’t forget you, and I hope you’re having fun in that stage up there in Heaven with the rest of them…

Moving on before I shed a tear, the big fatal flaw of this film however lies on the screenplay. By watching this film, it’s clear that both writers James DeMonaco and Kevin Foxx had a great idea going, as evidenced in the great pains they took researching the complete ins and outs of hostage negotiating, including a memorable highlight in which Jackson taunts one of his fellow “green” teammates and ultimately gives him a humiliating lesson regarding the matter. The problem is, these two don’t know how to set the scenario up. The buildup to the whole shenanigans is plain simply atrocious. Though it starts off with a bang, things suddenly are moved at a rushed pace, with plot points inserted and checked off rather than seamlessly setting them up. Characters are not given time to develop, and our main protagonist isn’t given much insight regarding his relationship with his wife, and even less so with his fellow teammates in the force. The whole business with the pension fund comes out of nowhere and Roman’s partner, who’s the key starting point in the whole mess is handled superficially. This half-baked set-up is the film’s Achilles heel and ultimately hampers the film in terms of suspense, intrigue and quality. The most pathetic scene is when Roman has documents planted in his house implicating him on his partners murder; the scene comes off so stupidly obvious that it just made me want to scoff in annoyance. Hell, you could even tell that Jackson wanted to get over that scene as quickly as possible in order to stave off further embarrassment. This rather ill advised 1st act made me question if this movie was going to be any good, or if it was going to be yet another lame-ass Die-Hard meets The Fugitive carbon copy. Thankfully, once Roman enters that Internal Affairs floor, that’s when the movie sets off and from then on, Director Gray manages to take the film’s central core of the story and run with it, and he deserves credit for that, as his action set pieces are impressive and thrilling. I just wish he had however worked more closely with his writers to iron out that first act in order to set the characters up more appropriately than what they had here.

Thankfully though, the film makes up for its deficiencies on the 2nd and 3rd acts, and those two alone are worthy enough reasons to watch this film, since within them hides a very intelligent and thrilling yarn until the very end. Had this film’s screenplay been given a further treatment, and set up the first act better, it would’ve been a masterwork. Nevertheless, as it stands, it is still a very good and well-executed action film, so don’t let that clunky opener stop you from watching two great actors in their prime going against each other and then against the forces that are conspiring against them. Good stuff! 3.5-5.

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originally posted: 05/24/09 03:38:55
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