IT'S TENSION CITY

REVIEWED - HOSTAGE: JEFF Talley is carrying around at least three weighty psychological burdens. A year ago, while working as a hostage negotiator in Los Angeles, he failed to save a woman and her son from the homicidal attentions of their deranged paterfamilias.

Now Jeff's own family is being detained by international hoodlums set on getting hold of some sort of DVD inconveniently situated in a hillside mansion where yet another hostage situation is in progress. Jeff, currently a humble country police chief, may weep and sweat, but he never quite loses the arrogant swagger that characterises the gait of Bruce Willis. Ah, the movies.

Hostage, an adaptation of a novel by the airport-friendly Robert Crais, is produced by Cheyenne, the star's own production company, which probably explains why it features a supporting role for Ms Rumer Willis - her face eerily blending equal parts of Bruce and Demi - and why the script has a distinctly underdeveloped feel to it.

Florent Siri, the picture's slick French director, is very strong on atmosphere and manages to make bullet wounds and pistol whippings look properly uncomfortable, but the longer Hostage goes on the more obvious it becomes that the various elements just don't fit together. By the close, when, clothed in flames, the principal villain takes on the aspect of an angry Wagnerian deity, it appears that everybody involved has given up trying.