Jackson, Spacey negotiate top-notch performances
JAKARTA (JP): The problem with having two such great Academy Award winners as Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey billed together is that you automatically set your sights too high.
One expects more than the best from The Negotiator. Oscar- winning performances at the very least.
That is not to say that the two do not deliver in this action- suspense thriller, but audiences are sometimes left longing for a little bit more.
It doesn't help either when it takes Kevin Spacey some 30- minutes into the movie before he appears for a meaty face-to-face role with Jackson.
Let's face it, it's these two names which are the movie's magnetic attraction.
Jackson plays the role of Danny Roman, a Chicago police hostage negotiator, who can psychoanalyze bad guys and talk them out of most situations.
That is until he himself is framed for murder in a graft scandal by someone in the police department. In this age of anti- KKN (corruption, collusion, nepotism), audiences here might giggle at the corruption setup as it involves swiping off police pension funds.
Jackson's character then takes things into his own hands and reverses roles by storming a police station and taking a handful of people hostage, including Inspector Niebaum played by the late J.T. Walsh.
Since Jackson doesn't know who the rotten cops are, he trusts nobody and demands another well-known negotiator Chris Sabian, played by Spacey help clear his name.
It's here that the movie really kicks in as Jackson and Spacey engage in a absorbing interplay interceded by brief action sequences.
The first 30-minutes of the movie are spent slowly building Jackson's character, which in the end also helps establish Spacey's, who's also a top negotiator.
When the two actors come face to face the lines are blurred as to who's negotiating with whom. It's a bit like Tom and Jerry without the comedy.
Putting the action sequences aside, The Negotiator becomes an intense chess match between the two expert negotiators.
Audiences are continuously left wondering until the end as to who the bad guys really are as the ring of deceit is slowly uncovered.
Trying to balance the fine contrast between the riveting exchanges between Jackson and Spacey, and the action sequences is what makes the film unsatisfying.
Director F. Gary Gray tries to develop a who dunnit story with blazing action sequences. Sort of a Dog Day Afternoon meets Lethal Weapon combination.
But it is unfortunately only half-absorbing and slightly enthralling as the two lead actors fall short of developing memorable characters on account of intruding shootout scenes, while the action fails to be full pandemonium to make way for the Jackson-Spacey duet.
Director Gray locked into the formula he adapted for his previous outing, 1996's Set It Off. But he fails to fully make use of Jackson and Spacey's presence.
Gray made a name for himself as a music video director. He worked on the Waterfalls video for TLC and How Come How Long with the great Stevie Wonder and Babyface.
He's now reportedly teaming up with Eddie Murphy to make Nutty Professor II.
Gray was fortunate to get cinematographer Russell Carpenter on this movie, fresh from receiving an Oscar for his work on Titanic.
Carpenter's credits include Indian in the Cupboard and the 1994's True Lies.
Hostage
For Jackson, 49, his role might be a little closer to home than he would have liked.
In 1969 he was briefly suspended from Atlanta's Morehouse College when with fellow students he took the college's Board of Trustees, which included Martin Luther King, Sr., hostage to protest the absence of black trustees and a black studies curriculum in the school.
Jackson was eventually forgiven for his youthful brashness and three years later received a degree in Theater Arts from the school.
In The Negotiator he again gives a strong performance and even award-winning performance. But then again looking back at his work in recent years -- A Time To Kill, Jackie Brown, Eve's Bayou, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Die Hard: With a Vengeance, Jungle Fever -- when hasn't it been up to par.
But here he falls just short of probably his best performance in Pulp Fiction.
Reports out of Hollywood indicate that he is slated to appear as a Jedi Knight in George Lucas' pre-equal to the Star Wars trilogy next year.
Jackson's co-star is someone of comparable quality and reputation.
Spacey and Jackson had a scene together in 1996's A Time To Kill and enjoyed it so much that they signed up for this project.
Spacey, 39, is a veteran of the stage, making his debut in New York in a 1981 production of Shakespeare's Henry IV.
However The Negotiator marks Spacey's first real starring role on the big screen. He was known as an excellent supporting actor in films like Seven, Outbreak, L.A. Confidential, and even earned an Oscar for The Usual Suspects. (mds)