Rating: C-
Dir: Peter O’Fallon
Star: Christopher Walken, Sean Patrick Flanery, Johnny Galecki, Dennis Leary
Given a career largely spent playing mob bosses, you’d think people would know better by now than to kidnap any character played by Christopher Walken. Apparently not, which is why a bunch of teenage guys end up holding him hostage, in order to make him use his resources to find and release a sister of theirs, who has also been kidnapped. Contrived? You betcha. And there’s nothing new here, neither in Walken’s character, nor in Leary’s irascible enforcer (albeit one who wears boots made from sting-ray!), although watching either of them in action is an absolute and undiluted pleasure.
The other main problem is the kids, who with the exception of Galecki’s nicely whiny wimp, comes over as little more than rich brats – it’s thus hard to care about them, even when Walken starts pitting them against each other, with his knowledge that the kidnapping was an inside job… Things – in both small- and large-scale senses – start to unravel rapidly thereafter; it’s unfortunate that you ceased to give a damn about most of the significant participants, save Leary and Walken, about half-an-hour earlier.