I think maybe I have figured it out. Bruce Willis I mean. I love just about everything he touches, and the first time he got to me on a second level it was with Mercury Rising. Critics hated it, but I thought it was great. It's one of those movies I still quote from today, well we joke about Simon drinking his hot cocoa 'sloooowly'. Last night I saw 'Hostage' and the secret is no more. Bruce Willis owns the dad zone.
The last movie that smacked me right in my dad-zone was 'The Road to Perdition'. But 'The Hostage' is a bit more gut-wrenchingly contemporary. The film has made me bring up the subject of security with my family - what do you do if a stranger breaks into the house? (My boy says throw the XBox controller at him).
This one doesn't go quite as far as 'Saw' in making a contemporary thriller hit very close to home, but it still kicks one in the gut rather like an amped up version of 'Panic Room'. Willis is his usual stoic, competent and sensitive self, and there are sterling performers by the juveniles of the film.
The moral of this story is basically, these are the kind of things that go wrong when there's no dad around, and it couldn't be dramatized in a better way. As an action and suspense thriller I think that puts it in a fairly unique class. Guys are always being asked to go see chick flicks, but I think this is the kind of movie women might want to check out to understand the paranoia of middle-aged fathers. We know the evil that men do.
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