March 10, 2005
By Matt Savelloni
“THE ART OF USING DECEIT AND CUNNING GROW CONTINUALLY WEAKER AND LESS EFFECTIVE TO THE USER.” – John Tillotson
Guess what? This week? No comic book! I was beginning to think Hollywood adapted nothing but graphic novels. This week’s study belongs to HOSTAGE, a novel by the celebrated crime writer Robert Crais!
So why am I suddenly missing comic books?
Crais is one of those writers who elude me. I consistently hear great things about his work and take note of the awards he wins almost by reflex. Crais earned instant acclaim with his celebrated Elvis Cole P.I. series while serving as one of television’s top scripters for shows like HILL STREET BLUES, MIAMI VICE and L.A. LAW. Reading HOSTAGE, it’s easy to see why Crais is such a success: he is a master at high-concept. I would have to explore other novels before I comment on his skill at execution, however, because HOSTAGE’s concept runs out of steam long before the final page.
Novels don’t get more straightforward (read: more Hollywood) than this. Former SWAT hostage negotiator Jeff Talley moves to an upscale desert community after a standoff leads to tragedy. His marriage shot, his heart and soul barren, Talley takes on the role of Chief of Police in a sleepy district until one day a violent crime explodes into a deadly hostage situation. Wanting nothing more than to pass the case off to the State Police, Talley returns to the frontlines after his own family is put at risk.
“BLACKMAIL HAS BECOME RESPECTABLE.” – Robert G. Menzies
HOSTAGE is one of those all-out reckoning tales. You know, the ones where every dour aspect of the main character’s life is overcome by one huge struggle. Readers are asked to suspend incredible amounts of disbelief and accept large levels of coincidence but these are minor quibbles. All thrillers must begin somewhere and they usually do so with an outlandish series of measures that put the players in place. Fine, Crais’ audience should be able to roll with the setup. But Crais keeps “setting up.” Once the standoff is in place and the mob ties are revealed, the book falls into a formulaic pattern of near misses and last minute recoveries by Talley. I was perfectly enthralled when HOSTAGE dealt with a negotiation between Talley and a young group of stick-up artists holding a rich family hostage. I was further intrigued by the Mafioso angle. I became frustrated by the entry of a secret assassin, corrupt police officers and reporters and off-site mob politics. I lost my last shred of patience and interest when Talley’s family was kidnapped and Crais dropped a crazed sociopathic killer into the mix: what, mobsters and brutal thugs weren’t enough? Suddenly, this was no longer Talley’s story: it was a mosaic of faux-tension and portentous dialogue, all of the frantic activity a distraction to the fact that the plot really wasn’t going anywhere, stuck just like the hostages.
No one can accuse Crais of being a master at misdirection, either. In HOSTAGE, he spells literally everything out. The intrusion of the mob is cued very early on, as is their abduction of Talley’s family and desire to recover the cash and accounting records inside the besieged house. The mysterious assassin is never a mystery until a final change in motives that comes so far out of left field it is more believable as a deus ex machina than a character revelation: a definite sign that Crais painted himself into a corner. By the time the “gotcha!” arrives with a major character turning out to be crooked, the reader is so tired of watching this desperate house of cards go up, the surprise bears weight only as nominal checkmark as things begin to burn down, literally.
HOSTAGE was definitely written by an author who knows the visual arts. It reads a lot like a “Look at me, Hollywood!” treatment for a movie. That’s not to suggest Crais lacks skill as a novelist. Hardly. His quick bursts of exposition honor the noir traditions he obviously adores, but his dialogue is too NYPD BLUE: it sure sounds “hard-boiled,” but I’m not sure anyone actually talks like this in reality. What we’re left with is a story too calculated for its own good. HOSTAGE might have been better served as one of Crais’ scripts. It features a likeable underdog in Jeff Talley but the events surrounding—and overwhelming—his hardship are too circus-oriented. HOSTAGE features 90% setup and 10% payoff and is too cursory, too populated by wooden caricatures in by the numbers far-fetched conflict, to ever be considered compelling.
“THE CLICHÉ IS DEAD POETRY.” – Gerald Brenan
HOSTAGE is perfect for Hollywood. And that’s not a bad thing. Although not suspenseful in the slightest in book form, it has the potential to be wrung into nail-biting cinema in the hands of the right director and cast. There also needs to be a change in the consequences involved: in other words, kill off a major character or instill an unsavory secret in one of the heroes that effects the outcome, anything to knock the audience off-guard. A director like David Fincher would have been perfect for HOSTAGE, a filmmaker unafraid to make uncompromising choices.
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Instead, we get French director Florent Emilio Siri, and he is a most promising choice. Siri directed a little-seen actioner titled NID DE GUEPES (THE NEST) that exuded confident skill in the genre. Let’s face facts: action filmmaking is putrid, plagued by gee-whiz, MTV fiends who substitute flash-bang for exciting film composition and spastic editing for suspenseful pacing. Walter Hill, Michael Mann, Steven Spielberg, Sam Peckinpah, John Frankenheimer, Don Seigel, James Cameron, Billy Friedkin, Sergio Leone, John McTiernan—these were men who could block, shoot and edit action like a motherfucker. Now it’s just shaky-cam crap jammed up the nostril of the leading man. Utter garbage. But Siri shows promise, even if his film falls apart at the end. He also plays for keeps, uninterested in distilling down the violence for a friendly rating.
Doug Richardson wrote the script. Richardson is a sometimes novelist whose books are far more consistent and enjoyable than his big screen endeavors (DIE HARD 2, BAD BOYS, MONEY TRAIN). I’m surprised Crais either passed or was passed over to take a shot at scripting HOSTAGE himself. After all, this is a writer with proven accomplishment in visual arts. Granted, all on the small screen, but he’s still a pro. At any rate, Richardson should be perfectly suited to translate the large-scale histrionics. What remains to be seen is if Talley’s overshadowed trauma can survive this time. And with Bruce Willis front and center, I have a feeling it very well might.
Bruce Willis established himself as the modern-day action hero in DIE HARD: witty, emotive, far from superhuman. One could argue that his performance remolded audience expectation for champions, evolving them past the square-jawed brands who preceded Willis—Stallone, Norris, Bronson, Connery, Schwarzenegger, even Harrison Ford with his aloof, Gary Cooper style. Willis was street, he was Jersey, tough but sarcastic, cynical and unimposing, relying more on brains than brawn. Within a few years of DIE HARD, we saw a reluctant Stallone in CLIFFHANGER, a save-the-world cyborg in Schwarzenegger’s T2, a haunted Secret Service agent in Eastwood’s IN THE LINE OF FIRE and a joking, no longer suicidal Mel Gibson in LETHAL WEAPON 2. In other words, Willis put humanity back into the kickass role. That eagerness to perform and not just be the point of view moving through the explosions should help Willis highlight Talley’s grief-stricken baggage and augment the redemption needed to elevate the story.
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” – Philip K. Dick
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