BRILLIANT yet unconventional LAPD negotiator Jeff Talley (Bruce Willis) feels responsible for the deaths of a young mother and her child during a tense hostage situation.

He resigns his high profile position and takes a job instead as the chief of police in the sleepy town of Bristo Camino in Ventura County.

The police department is a small, close-knit operation and crime figures for the area are low.

It's a disconcerting change of pace for Talley, his wife Jane (Serena Scott Thomas) and teenage daughter Amanda (Rumer Willis).

The ghosts of the past return to haunt Talley when three delinquent teenagers botch a car robbery and find themselves in the wrong house on the wrong day.

Dennis (Jonathan Tucker), his brother Kevin (Marshall Allman) and the dangerously intense Mars (Ben Foster) are forced to take the owner, Mr Smith (Kevin Pollak), his daughter Jennifer (Michelle Horn) and young son Tommy (Jimmy Bennett) hostage in their multi-million dollar hillside compound.

A tense situation rapidly spirals out of control and Talley is reluctantly thrust back into the role of hostage negotiator.

However, there is a terrifying twist: loving family man Mr Smith is a valuable pawn in a lucrative underworld operation.

Mysterious criminals urgently need to acquire information inside Smith's office, and they will stop at nothing to achieve their goal.

Hostage is a decent little thriller, torn from the pages of Robert Crais's novel, which generates its suspense from the nicely convoluted plot and director Florent Siri's dazzling shooting style.

Setting the action in and around one house over the course of one day and one night lends the picture an air of urgency and cranks up the claustrophobia.

However, the tension never becomes truly suffocating because little Tommy Smith runs rings around his captors without breaking a sweat.

It follows that if a mere boy can outwit the gun-toting trio, Talley will be able to work his magic too.

Willis turns in one of his better performances, crying and grimacing on command. Perhaps acting opposite his real-life daughter Rumer helped to drag the emotions out of the hard man?

Foster is deliciously twisted, verging on hammy, and Tucker and Allman effectively portray rabbits caught in the headlights of their own bad timing.

Bennett and Horn make the most of their two-dimensional roles; both fall victim to the script's predilection for nasty, gratuitous violence.

The finale is an outrageous, all-guns-blazing bloodbath.

Rating 6/10