The opening scenes introduce us to protagonist Terry Thorne as he briefs his employers in London about a mission to free a hostage in Chechnya; Terry is an ex-SAS soldier who now works as a hostage negotiator. We are then introduced to the other protagonists; Alice and Peter Bowman; they are in South America where Peter is involved in the construction of a dam; although it looks like that may come to an end when the company he works for is taken over. The loss of the project is the least of their worries though; as Peter drives to work he is grabbed by rebels who take him to the mountains and demand a large ransom. Terry is called in to be the negotiator but not long after he arrives he learns that the Bowman's kidnap insurance isn't up to date and his new employer doesn't want to get involved. Luckily for Alice Terry decides to do the job anyway and he is soon negotiating with a representative of the rebels. Peter meanwhile is moved on to a camp in the jungle where he befriends a German hostage. Day, weeks and months pass as the negotiations slowly proceed; then the two hostages escape… the German gets away but Peter is seriously injured and recaptured. To make matters worse the negotiations stall; Terry, his friend Dino and a small group will have to go into the jungle and extract him.

This was an interesting story which avoided several clichés; it didn't take place over the space of a few short days and violence was the last rather than the first resort of those seeking to free the hostage. The relatively slow pace of the negotiations gave us a chance to get to know the characters and gradually raise the tension. The scenes of Peter's captivity were believable and at times gruelling. When the action comes it is short and sharp without excessive explosions and an unbelievable number of bad guys to kill. The cast did a solid job although I wasn't sure about the supposed romantic subplot between Alice, played by Meg Ryan, and Terry, Russell Crowe… it seemed both superfluous and low key… almost as though somebody told the director to add a subplot he wasn't interested in. The remote Ecuadorian scenery looks fantastic without it feeling as though the tourist board had selected the locations; they also add to the feeling of isolation for Peter. Overall this is a pretty good film; I was surprised I hadn't come across it till I found the DVD in a charity shop bargain bin! It is certainly worth a watch.

David Morse is an engineer captured and held hostage for ransom by a corrupt group of revolutionaries in the fictional South American country of Tecada or Tecate or San Placebo or someplace. Morse is taken to a remote camp where a few other captives are being held for the same purpose. Man, are these revolutionaries a bunch of barbaric slobs. They lock Morse up in a hut made of reeds and give him a rubber boot saying, "Here ees your toilet." They use the most foul language. They booze it up and smoke dope, and if they take a dislike to you they give you a taste of the old bastinado. On top of that, the weather on this mountaintop is lousy -- cold and wet. After a while it all began to remind me of my marriage.

Back at the ranch, Morse's anguished wife, Meg Ryan, is at a loss for what to do. There is a call for ransom and, after a few skirmishes with the local negotiating team, which seems about as corrupt as the revolutionaries, there appears a business-like and knowledgeable professional hostage rescuer in the form of Russell Crowe, he of the mighty latissimus dorsi, along with half a dozen of his buddies led by David Caruso. They're a sensitive but macho bunch. They address each other as ladies in the local saloons.

Interesting and convincing material on negotiating with bandits follows. It's a little like a course in Hostage Negotiations 101. While the movie stays on this course, it's informative and pretty good.

The months pass by as Crowe and the rebels haggle over the price for Morse's life. Many viewers might find this aggravating, especially Americans. We are a "can do" nation, not a "can wait" nation. "If you're gonna do it, then do it now." Mercifully, and to their commercial advantage, the writers scarcely have Morse penned up in that airy hut before there's a cut to a title: DAY 44. See, that way you don't have to wait. Let Meg Ryan do the waiting.

In the end, it develops that Morse already knows too much about the coca crops and the organization of the bandidos and all that, so there's no way they're going to let him out alive. The money no longer matters. This precipitates a raid by Crowe and Caruso and their half dozen compañeros. They follow the usual routine, dressing in camos and greasing up their faces with black and olive drab paint that doesn't do a THING for them. And there is the ritual laying out of weapons, two smoke grenades, two stun grenades, and two HE. The assault by helicopter.

Now, these half dozen highly trained pros are up against a hundred well armed and slightly insane dudes. But what's that to Crowe and his gang? All it means is a higher body count. (Cf., the raid on the camp in "Predator".) The climax is a guignol scene in which none of our guys misses and all the bad guys do nothing BUT miss. None of the rescuers dies, the hostages are rescued, Morse goes back to his wife, their marriage renewed, and Crowe leaves her behind in a gentlemanly way although he's fallen for her. And who wouldn't? She's cute as hell. She looks like the girl in your high school class that all the boys dreamed about before they went to sleep. Not the sultry slut but the virginal cheerleader. Her troublingly blue eyes have circumferences of black. The actors playing the rebels put in as good a performance as anyone else in the film. There's an unexploited pool of talent for you. They have actors, we have Keanu Reeves.

I kind of enjoyed it. The location photography is magnificent and the characterizations convincing. The confrontation between Crowe and the local team of corrupt negotiators is as tense as any other scene in the movie. It was also a good idea to individuate the bandidos. They're not all scuzz bags. There's a more or less helpless young woman who scolds the men for their rudeness, and there's a younger rebel who isn't entirely unfeeling.

I am a big fan of Taylor Hackfords overall work. But I don't think this matches some of his other movies (unfortunately). One of my favorites of all time (actually my number one movie) is "Blood in Blood out" aka as Bound by Honor, which makes it sound less like a horror movie. Of course it is a drama, but I guess people might be confused by the title. This movie right here has a great cast (Russell Crowe starring), but lacks the emotion I got of some of his earlier work.

It's unfortunate, but while not a bad movie, I don't think this matches what he has done before and the question could be if he lost his touch. I haven't seen any of his more recent films since then, but the success of Ray alone might be a disprove of that theory. So if you're a fan of his, do not be too harsh on this movie if you can. If you don't care about directors in general or this one in particular, do not expect too much from the movie