The night before she’s to operate on the president, surgeon Ellen Sanders (Toni Collette) is taken hostage in her house with her family by a 4-people team lead by Duncan (Dylan McDermott). The deal is simple: she kills the president during the surgery, or they will kill her husband (Tate Donovan), her teenage son and daughter (Quinn Shepard). She is warned that they have eyes and ears everywhere, and she can’t seem to figure out a way out of it.

And as much as they look like the perfect family, everyone but the mother seems to be hiding something from everyone: the son deals pot, the daughter might be pregnant and the husband’s cheating.

Unbeknownst to her, Duncan is an FBI agent, and president’s advisor, as well as Duncan’s father-in-law are in this. We also know Duncan is a loving father and a husband, he doesn’t seem to want to use more force than he has to, though he will not miss an opportunity to teach a lesson to a misbehaving hostage if he has to. We don’t know why he is doing this, though we have a pretty good guess.

Of course her first instinct being to save lives, Dr. Sanders will further challenge Duncan but she will not like the consequences….

*

The Hostages is a fun hostage-based drama/action series with a solid cast. I’ve been a Dylan McDermott fan since his The Practice days, and he has a knack for playing strong, grey and intense characters (The Practice, The Hostages, Dark Blue).

The Hostages isn’t perfect. As expected, hostages do a lot of stupid things, especially the father. But then again, not having been held hostage (thank Goodness), I can’t say for sure that people won’t act like that. Then there are your captors, who are led by Duncan, who’s essentially a nice guy. So when a captor is unwilling to kill, he also gets to do some risky stuff. Still, it provides some decent action when hostages misbehave and the captors retaliate.

It’s supposed to be a mini-series, so hopefully we’ll get all the episodes. Based on the Israeli television series.

Enjoy!

Recommended Hostage-featuring Movies

Inside Man starring Clive Owen, Denzel Washington & Jodie Foster

The Entitled starring Kevin Zegers, Ray Liotta, Laura Vandervoort & Victor Garber

Air Force One starring Harrison Ford, Glenn Close and Gary Oldman