Let's Negotiate

The kids got school supplies yesterday so they're all ready to head back to school next week. Today they attended a pool party for the elementary school kids (Catherine tagged along because it's not like we can leave her home alone). Still hard for me to believe I have a child going into elementary school.

Tonight's movie review is The Negotiator. I rented this one solely on the fact that it has Samuel L. Jackson in it. Well, that was part of the reason anyway, I won't rent just anything with him in it since I have no intentions of renting Black Snake Moan. But rather when I saw previews for The Negotiator Jackson appeared to be giving a crazy loud over the top and boisterous performance and that was enough for me.

The Negotiator is about a police negotiator Lt Danny Roman (Jackson) who ends up being set up for a crime he didn't commit (yes, I know, how stunningly original). He goes a little nuts and the next thing you know they need to bring in another negotiator (Kevin Spacey) to deal with this negotiator. This is a long movie. About two hours and twenty minutes and it's an extremely well done and tense and exciting movie also, at least for the first two hours. The movie seems to overstay it's welcome in the last half hour or so and loses something at that point, but up until then it's a crazy ride that's very well paced and executed. I think they put that last twenty minutes in so they could wrap up everything nice and neat for the viewers. There's nothing really fresh and new in this movie. Much like the "I've been setup" plot it's all stuff you've seen before and it's also fairly predictable. But the performances of both Jackson and Spacey are stellar and really kick it up a notch so to speak. Don't let the fact that it fizzles out at the end stop you from watching it.