Hostage (2005)

Hostage (2005) was made during that period in Bruce Willis' career after The Sixth Sense (1999) and Unbreakable (2000) but before he returned to the Die Hard franchise, a period when he made a lot of movies that could've been Die Hard sequels were it not for his character not being called something other than John McClane. Willis stars as Jeff Talley, one of LA's best hostage negotiators who is called to the scene of a hostage crisis where a man named Walter Smith (Kevin Pollak) and his family has been taken hostage by a criminal named Mars (Ben Foster). Smith has been laundering money for an extreme right-wing militant group, but it turns out that this entire hostage crisis is a ruse for Mars and his men to take Talley's family hostage at the same time. Now Talley is in a seemingly un-winnable situation wherein he must choose between saving the family of a known criminal or saving his own family. Of course, if Talley were anyone other than Bruce Willis, you might get nervous enough to think he won't save both families, but come on. Even when Willis isn't playing John McClane, he's playing John McClane. The bad news is that the flick doesn't feature any nudity, since this is the kind of flick more interested in building tension than relieving it, but the good news is that it also features Bruce Willis shirtless! 55 minutes in, Willis and his on-screen partner Michael D. Roberts take off their shirts in an ambulance in order to prove to the hostage takers that they're not armed! The good news is, you're likely now fully armed... if you catch our drift!