HOSTAGE is a mix of suspense, thrills, psychological drama and action with unforeseen twists and turns. The very idea of what it means to be a hostage continually evolves as the various characters' paths intersect and collide. Security becomes insecurity. Physical escape becomes mental manipulation. Mind games become life and death matters.
In HOSTAGE, director Florent Siri's first English-language film, nothing is as it appears to be as the action unfolds in and around one house over the course of one day and one night. As in his acclaimed French-language action-thriller, THE NEST, Siri's intricate, mesmerizing shooting and editing style heightens the tension of the multi-layered, interwoven conflicts, while dazzling the audience with stunning visuals. HOSTAGE is a timeless film noir tale delivering a suspense-filled, visionary spin on thriller and action films.
"In HOSTAGE, we layer the onion, rather than peel it," said the film's producer Arnold Rifkin. "Throughout the movie Bruce never gets away from a hostage situation. The character dilemma, the emotional dilemma, the arc of the character and everything from when we first see him through to film's end revolves around character arc, redemption and self-awareness."
Director Florent Siri found the story psychologically compelling while playing the hostage genre in ways reminiscent of classic film noir. The focus on the characters, the story's contemporary realism and Siri's love of everyday details made HOSTAGE the first English language film he wanted to make. "It's a psychological thriller," Siri said. "The story is about redemption. It's about people who are lost for a moment. For everybody, particularly Bruce's character, it's a story about fighting against their own ghosts."
"There are certainly twists and turns that we've never seen before," said actor Kevin Pollak, who portrays Walter Smith in the film. "I love films that force the audience to be participants rather than just voyeurs. This is one of those films where you jump in, try to get ahead, try to figure out what the heck is going on, and you get that much more involved."
Co-star Serena Scott Thomas sums it up: "It's the ripple effect of little things that we do in life that can be devastating," she said. "I love in stories and books when a very small thing becomes a very big thing. I love that in movies."

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
More than three years ago, in April 2001, Cheyenne, Rifkin and Willis' production company, were overnighted the book, Hostage, written by Robert Crais. By the next day, they were in negotiations to buy the book and by the end of that day, the novel found a home at Cheyenne and MGM. Crais' novel, Hostage, follows the intersecting lives of different individuals, who through various choices and encounters, all becoming hostage to something or someone.
This interwoven tapestry of desperation and chance creates unpredictable action and unexpected plot twists, as in the classic suspense thriller films that Willis and Rifkin love.
"Although all great action movies are suspense movies, all an action film is, is a suspense film with a lot of physicality to it -- at least, that's what makes a really good action film," said Doug Richardson, who wrote the screenplay. "This movie is a suspense film in its true nature--where you keep loading the story, the plot and the emotion without releasing it, to give you a sense that you were constantly held in suspense."
After purchasing the novel, Willis, Rifkin and David Wally (Cheyenne executive and Executive Producer of HOSTAGE) met with the author, Crais, and discussed changing elements of the far-reaching, multi-layered story to focus on one character, Jeff Talley. They worked with Crais for several months to develop the story for the screen. "Bruce was instrumental in developing the story," said Rifkin. "He had to know this character. He had to feel this character. He kept tightening the story, clarifying the conflict."
Stratus Film Company partner, Bob Yari said, "It was marrying a terrific script with an international star whose great strength is exactly this genre. It was putting Bruce Willis in his most successful type of role, with a fresh and exciting twist and real heart".
An important part of understanding the character of hostage negotiator Jeff Talley involved tackling the reality and details of his job, his personality and his world. Accuracy in police procedure, demeanor and language, as well as bringing the disparate storylines together, were key to translating from book to screen.

FINDING THE RIGHT DIRECTOR
In re-focusing on Talley, the filmmakers aimed to keep the audience locked-in and anticipating, much like the characters themselves. This unrelenting tension and pace necessitated a director whose vision and visual style would build upon the story's compelling and complex structure.
"Cheyenne had seen THE NEST and immediately attached Siri to on of their projects. But when they began putting HOSTAGE together with Stratus, We just sort of pillaged him from another one of our projects and put him on this one,'" said Wally. "Audiences may not know who Florent Siri is yet, but they're going to know him. He brings his sensibilities [and a] style of filmmaking that distinguishes this film from others in the genre."
Executive Producer Hawk Koch adds: "Bruce absolutely wanted to get this film made and kept pushing and pushing, but he didn't have a director. Last year (2003), he saw THE NEST and flew Florent over here. They met and he decided he was going to make this movie with Florent Siri-- And I gotta tell you, Bruce was absolutely right. Florent Siri is one hell of a director."
Says Wally of Siri: "Florent is truly a visionary and an absolutely singular filmmaker." The French-born Siri developed his mesmerizing shooting and editing style while studying at the Sorbonne, where he trained under director Eric Rohmer, whose fame goes back to the French Nouvelle Vague movement. During the 1990's, Siri further developed his style while directing dozens of music videos for celebrated French artists such as IAM, Pascal Obispo, JP Capdevielle, Lofofora and others. In 1998, he directed his first feature film, UNE MINUTE DE SILENCE ("One Minute of Silence"). In 2000, Siri directed THE NEST, which was a critical and popular success. At the American Film Market in Los Angeles, industry professionals lauded the film and Lion's Gate purchased it.
Stratus Film Company partner and producer, Mark Gordon said, "From the moment I saw THE NEST, I knew Florent was a director I wanted to work with. His film has such a wonderful blend of story and visual style that I knew he was the perfect choice for HOSTAGE."
By his own admission, Willis had seen Siri's THE NEST many before Siri was hired. "It was a surprise for me when my American agent called me and said, 'Bruce Willis will call you,' and I said, 'Yes, OK, fantastic.... Are you sure it is Bruce Willis?'" Siri recalls. "And Bruce did call, right at Christmas and said 'I want to meet you. I really like your movie, THE NEST.' We met and just talked movies since he was pretty busy with lots of movies, so I figured it might be in two years or so. But a few months later, in August, he called and said, 'I've got a script, if you want to read it.'"
Siri read the screenplay and found the conflicts and structure compelling. He told Willis he would love to make the film with him. "Bruce Willis, for us in Europe, is a great American icon," said Siri. "But for me, he was this fantastic actor and I found while directing the movie [that] he is a fantastic Stradivarius, so it was wonderful to work with him. After THE NEST, I had a lot of American scripts sent to me. And while it was a dream to shoot an American film, for me, my decision on this film was really because it was with Bruce Willis."
Siri grew up watching all the American movies, as well as French and other European films. His style lies somewhere between the American and the French cultures and filmmaking traditions. He had very specific ideas about story changes, primarily to change the age of the three men who take the Smith family hostage, making them younger and to delete the novel's many references to the Mafia. Siri wanted to eliminate the Mafia characters and subplot in order to focus the film's action and create more of a portrait of today's youth -- specifically young American men hungry to indulge in their own version of the American Dream.
"Florent is a great student of Alfred Hitchcock films. That was one of the wonderful things about developing and working on this film with him, because the references we
were able to bring up, were similar references of movies that we loved," said Richardson, adding, "Florent had a very strong vision for the movie and it was very similar to what we wanted to create."
Willis supported Siri's decision to focus on Talley, but not at the expense of the other main characters. "What Bruce brought was a lot of complexities and additions to the characters, and not just his character," said Richardson. "He actually was far more interested in the character of the boys in the house and the family. Bruce is really good at hammering it out to see if it's going to hold up, in a very positive way. He's a great collaborator and producer."

MAKING IT ALL BELIEVABLE AND REAL
Another major change in adapting the novel to the screen was the process of authenticating the procedures and psychology used in hostage negotiations. The producers brought in SWAT expert Peter Weireter as a technical consultant to help with the script's accuracy and, later, with the execution of the hostage negotiations during the production.
"We worked fastidiously regarding accuracy," said Rifkin. "The opening scene in the film is very much of what it would have been like in a FBI hostage situation [and] how it is handled with the negotiator whose got to make a decision. Do you take out the perpetrator when you have the shot? Do you try and save the people in the house by taking the suspect out? In those situations, it is the hostage negotiator who makes the call."
Weireter, who has worked for the Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team for more than 22 years, understood the filmmakers' desire for realism. "I worked very hard with Florent on the negotiator part of the dialogue, so that audiences can feel that Bruce really is a negotiator," Weireter said. "The words he is saying, his tempo and delivery really has an authenticity to the feel of what it's like to talk to somebody who is totally unstable and yet, we are trying to calm this person down and keep them from the worst case scenario. We're trying to convince him to do what we want him to do, but somewhat make it his idea."
The bottom line for hostage negotiators, says Weireter, is to save, not judge, the perpetrator. "SWAT's credo throughout the country is to have a peaceful resolution to everything," he said. "Whether it's a hostage rescue, a jumper on a roof, a suspect barricaded by himself, our job is to get him out. We are successful, if no one gets hurt."
Similarly, working with SWAT experts and Peter Weireter also added an element of authenticity that helped the story's emphasis on realism. "I give him the reality, the way we do it and then I suggest how we might blend it to get what Florent wants," Weireter said. "I worked very hard with him on the negotiator part of the dialogue, so that the audience can feel that Bruce really is a negotiator. Every situation is different. We train for the worst-case scenario in real life, so we can handle the real ones easy. We have all sorts of different remedies to the problem, with the ultimate goal of saving people."

THE CHARACTERS AND THE CAST
At the heart of HOSTAGE is negotiator Jeff Talley who has never lost, which is the reality, according to the experts. "In researching the project, we were told by everybody we consulted that these guys rarely ever lose," Wally said. "Almost all these situations end in the win column."
"We have two faces of Talley," Siri notes. "We have one face: The guy, as police chief, who tries to control everything, and when he is alone, we have the guy who is lost, tortured, full of doubt, dragged back into a situation he never wanted to deal with again."
But it is exactly Talley's training and skills as a negotiator that enable him to hide his own motives while commandeering a hostage situation that is careening out of control. "The qualities of a hostage negotiator include the coolness, the ability to keep your own demeanour intact," said Weireter. "It starts out with being a good listener, finding out that key, something you can come back to that person and start a dialogue with, and elicit clues from him and intelligence for the SWAT guys. To me, the biggest skill is you have to be a good listener before you can be a good speaker."
Talley's ability to find common ground enables him to get the hostage takers to do what he wants them to do. With hostages inside and outside the Smith house, Talley finds himself at the center of an escalating, high-stakes situation, in which the manipulators and the manipulated are ever-changing.
"A major element of holding and negotiating hostages is manipulation, how those two kind of interplay and everyone is trying to get an edge on everyone else, some more successfully than others," said co-star Jonathan Tucker, who portrays Dennis, the young man who tries to negotiate the Smith's family release with Talley. "Every party is thinking they are doing it successfully, when in truth, there can be only one hero and one man who succeeds and walks away."
"There are three very distinct situations in the movie, three completely different groups of people working with conflicting agendas," said Wally. "And in order to resolve the crisis successfully, Talley has to manage all of these different pressures and ride out the twists and turns."
The filmmakers, working with casting directors Victoria Burrows and Scot Boland, searched for the best young actors they could find to portray Mars, Dennis and Kevin, the three young men who take Walter Smith's family hostage.
Rifkin said, "The casting of the three young men was critical. The audience has to see a brotherly yet volatile dynamic between them in order to remain invested as the situation inside the house escalates.
That something inside, the filmmakers believe, is at the heart of the story: Disenfranchised youth and family lost. "There is a recklessness that seems prevalent in some of the troubled misunderstood youth of America, where it's just changed from generation to generation," said co-star Pollak. "It seems to get more intense and much, much, much more dangerous.
Hollywood newcomer Marshall Allman, who portrays Dennis' brother, Kevin, sees his character as having "a little more moral fiber, a little more wisdom" than the older boys. "Because of Dennis' superiority complex, his anger and bitterness toward his own situation, he is quick to point a finger, to alleviate his pain through causing pain to someone else. When Mars comes in, it's like his solid reinforcement," Allman said.
Ben Foster, who portrays Mars, believes "Dennis wants the car and Mars wants the girl," he said. "He likes that she has flipped off Dennis. He likes the balls. He likes the fire in her, finds it attractive. But it becomes the wrong place, wrong time. I believe that Dennis is trying to impress Mars, his new friend. He looks up to him. Dennis calls him a Viking. He knows how to do cool stuff."
Actor Kevin Pollak portrays hostage Walter Smith, a loving, widowed, father of two, whose work, as an accountant for a powerful and ruthless client, has put his family in jeopardy. "I actually love that we don't know if it is the Mafia or the CIA or whomever that he works for," Pollak says. "One of the most interesting parts of the film is the many layers of the characters and the many faces all of us wear, that all of us have within us. We certainly see the good side of Walter Smith, and we also find out about the bad side, too. The story is about redemption for his character as well as Bruce's character."

FILMING HOSTAGE
The final character in HOSTAGE is the house itself. Found on a location high on the top of a hill in Topanga Canyon, California, Walter Smith's house is a virtual modern-day fortress with security cameras in every room, steel-reinforced windows, hidden panels, surveillance equipment, sensors, intercoms, and an electronic security gate.
"When I first read the script, the house was a character to me, same way the house in PSYCHO was a character in the film," said Siri. "At the beginning, you think it's a beautiful house, but step-by-step, you see the this house with the big security system is more a trap, than a house. It's the art of paranoia and it turns against Smith and his family. They cannot get inside the house to rescue the hostages and the hostages can't escape to the outside. Everyone is trapped. We are trapped. In this movie, you are trapped both inside and outside, at the same time."
Originally in the screenplay, the house was a typical suburban tract home, similar to thousands of houses throughout Los Angeles. But Siri had something else in mind: A modern architectural house somewhere in the hills that looked "like a castle."
Koch recalls scouting locations with Siri, trying to find the right house to play such a pivotal role in the film. "We were in Topanga Canyon and you could see this house from far away," said Koch. "When we drove up, Florent said, 'This is the house. ' He knew. We looked everywhere for another two weeks until Florent said, 'Why are you looking? That is the house.' And so it is."
Production Designer Larry Fulton, who worked previously with Willis on the Oscarwinning, THE SIXTH SENSE, found the house worked for him and his crew, enhancing the modern architectural wonder into a house boasting, what Talley calls, "a $100,000 worth of white man paranoia."
Like Walter Smith himself, his house has secrets. "It's a character in the movie," said Pollak. "There again, the layers of the onion are slowly being peeled back. We find out more and more about the house. It's not just a wealthy, secure home. It also has a large safe with a lot of cash in it -- more money than anyone should have in a home safe. There are a lot of security gadgets -- silent alarms, surveillance cameras every few feet, inside an out -- way too much for any accountant, that's for sure. So, questions arise that are only answered with time."
As with THE NEST, Siri uses the night to add an element of the timeless to the story. "It can be any time and anywhere. It can be 10 years ago or the present," he says. "The night gives this feeling of something out of time, of something that is timeless."
According to Koch, Siri's love of the film noir of the forties and fifties lends itself perfectly to HOSTAGE. "Florent actually combines his love of film noir with his love of action thriller movies of the seventies and he takes that and combines it with the look of music videos of the 21st century.
Siri believes in preparation and that includes intensive storyboards, which he re-figures and re-works like one would a screenplay. "He storyboards every single shot in the movie," said Wally. "And not just a draft of it. I mean re-draft, re-draft, re-writing, coming up with new ideas. He just kept working it until he felt we were prepared and this is the movie we want to make."
Thus, these storyboards are not so much a guide, as what Koch calls, "a manual." "He is already cutting the scenes in his head. He has put them down on these storyboards and that's how we're shooting. One of the best things in making a film is, if you have great communication between your director, your cast and your whole crew. And because Florent's storyboards are so right on and his cinematographer, Giovanni, who has worked with Florent twice before, they are joined in their brain. They just look at each other and everybody knows what the next shot is going to be. They are thinking ahead and for me, who has always been preaching this is the way to do a movie, I'm sitting back and having a ball because these guys know what they're doing."