Retro Film Review: The Negotiator (1998)

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Today, just like in the beginnings of Hollywood, stars and their charisma are selling big budget movies to the audience. After getting in the theatres, viewers soon learn that their favourite actors and actresses didn't bring anything into film except their familiar faces. But sometimes a promise from the posters is actually delivered on the screen. One such example is The Negotiator, 1998 action thriller directed by F. Gary Gray.

In this film Samuel L. Jackson plays Lieutenant Danny Roman, pride of Chicago Police Department. Roman's superb hostage negotiating abilities, combined with tendency to take risks, have saved numerous lives. Following celebration of latest hostage-saving triumph, Roman is approached by his old friend and colleague Nathan Roenick (played by Paul Guilfoyle) and told about police pension fund being embezzled. Soon afterwards Roenick gets murdered and Roman learns that all evidence points towards him. With all friends and partners shunning him Roman decides to take desperate action in order t save his career and freedom - he invades the office of Internal Affairs investigator Niebaum (played by J.T. Walsh) and takes him and couple of other people as hostages. As an experienced hostage negotiator, he knows all the tricks and demands that an outsider be brought to handle negotiations. That outsider is Lieutenant Chris Sabian (played by Kevin Spacey), hostage negotiator whose methods are quite different from Roman's. A battle of wills starts – Sabian wants to have hostages released while Roman plays for time and tries to flush out the real perpetrators of murder and embezzlement. In the meantime, Adam Beck (played by David Morse), trigger-happy SWAT commander, begs his superiors to let him end the stand-off in a simpler and more violent way.

Although inspired by real events that took place in 1980s St. Louis, the plot of The Negotiator is nothing more than an excuse to put two great actors into a film and pit their charismas and acting styles against each other. Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey are actors quite capable of delivering such titanic clash on the screen. Jackson, one of the most prolific and the most popular actors of 1990s Hollywood, delivers very credible combination of intelligence and genuine rage. Spacey, actor known for more minimalist style and pecialised for the roles of enigmatic characters, is also very good in the role of Roman's opposite. Jackson and Spacey have great chemistry together and their interaction is marvellous. The audience is fascinated with their characters' mind games and doesn't pay much attention to the film's numerous plot holes and cliches.

When Jackson and Spacey aren't on the screen, the film is left in capable hands of director F. Gary Gray. He handles the action scenes very well, but his skills aren't enough to rescue The Negotiator from usual script flaws. The beginning of the film is predictable, the middle is marred with unnecessary action scene and the end is disappointing. But Jackson and Spacey somehow manage to hold this film together. The rest of the cast is also good, including J.T. Walsh in another thankless role of smirking villain (which was one of his last) and Paul Giamatti as obligatory comic relief. With such great cast and Gray's directing skills The Negotiator proves to be a good deal for the audience.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on July 9th 2004)

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