Hostage High (1997) [Director’s Uncut Version] – DVD

Detention: The Siege at Johnson High
**/**** Image B Sound C+ Extras C
starring Rick Schroder, Henry Winkler, Freddie Prinze Jr., Ren Woods
screenplay by Larry Golin
directed by Michael W. Watkins

by Walter Chaw Kids who go to Columbine High School and don't compete in organized athletics are referred to as "no sports." It's not a kind term. On the weekends in Littleton, crowds of teenagers driving new model Dodge Rams, BMWs, and SUVs collect in area parking lots to make a lot of noise and hoot at people driving by until the police arrive to disperse them–if they bother to come at all. If you're African-American like a good friend of mine, they'll sometimes make monkey noises; if you're Asian like myself, they do the Mr. Miyagi crane pose and laugh like loons. From my personal experience in this community, having 15 of their fellow students die in a hail of bullets did not teach a significant population of Columbiners compassion, tolerance, and respect. Maybe just the opposite.

Littleton is a place of rich Caucasian children milk-fed on their suburban blues and unfettered privilege. They're unused to being corrected and still unfamiliar with what it means to be on the wrong end of their intolerance and bullying. The social climate here breeds them to be this way, tacitly encourages them to be strong at the expense of the weak. When anti-bullying legislation was passed in Colorado recently, it was passed against the wishes of a large contingent of parents who didn't want their children deprived of the experience of being hazed and the honour of kicking and beating underclassmen in their turn. Littleton includes Highlands Ranch; the two communities are among the richest–and whitest–in the nation. The Confederate flag is a favourite decoration of truck rear windows and flatbeds.

When Harris and Kleibold opened fire on their peers, killing over a dozen people including themselves, they committed an atrocity that has no justification–make no mistake. But as the months and the years have passed, a clearer picture of the gross mishandling of the situation both before and after the event has evolved: police incompetence, administratively sanctioned harassment, and jocks given full reign to intimidate and brutalize the sensitive and the "no sport." (For an excellent look at some of the newer issues to have arisen surrounding Columbine, please see this article from Littleton's free press.) Most tellingly, after the events at Columbine, perpetrated by persecuted children twisted into believing that their only way out was to seek vengeance on their tormentors, the school administration "invited" everyone who had a habit of wearing black to take a tutor and not return to class to graduate with their classmates. Small thinking from small minds and a clear illustration of the interest the people in charge have in suckling the blond and the beautiful and steamrolling the different. There needs to be a film on the subject that addresses these extenuating circumstances.

At Hostage High, Jason (Rick Schroder, speechlessly fantastic) is a shiftless loser blaming his life's failures on the fact that he never graduated high school. Living with his shrewish mother, Jason one day visits his alma mater with bad intentions and a loaded shotgun. After a kinetically (and tastefully) filmed rampage in which four are murdered and ten wounded, Jason holes up in the band room with a group of hostages led by the oatmeal bland Aaron (Freddie Prinze Jr.). My biggest disappointment in the film is that Prinze Jr. doesn't get it right between his eyes, thus putting him out of my misery–and Hostage High's. The remainder of the film consists of largely tensionless negotiations between Jason and a nebbish deputy Skippy (Henry Winkler), plus Aaron doll's burgeoning romance with the daughter of a police deputy (Katie Wright).

Despite ominous and glaring similarities, Hostage High is not based on Columbine but on an incident that occurred in Northern California on May 1, 1992. Taken in that context, what I can say is that I'm endlessly amazed that the reality in based-on-true-story films so often falls into rote formula pigeonholes. Hostage High isn't at all interested in why this disturbed young man would take arms against his former school, and with that essential lack of understanding, the centre of the film is hollow and anchorless. It boils the true-life calamity of children killing children down to the umpteenth retelling of The Petrified Forest, Dog Day Afternoon, and Mad City. In declining to address the pathology behind Jason's actions, Hostage High is a mere exploitation film featuring one performance (Schroder's) so good that every other person in the movie looks clownish next to it.

Hostage High is not a film about the "whys"–it's a tired formula that unforgivably tries to cash in on our prurient interest in mayhem and revenge fantasies. Subplots are hastily abandoned and characters (excepting Schroder's) are so cardboard and interchangeable that although there are several scenes during and immediately following Jason's spree handled with expertise and pathos, the overall feeling of the piece is one of shrug-worthy "blah." For Schroder and for the few moments that capture the terror of the attack (including its immediate aftermath), Hostage High is worth a peek. It's a pity that five minutes of value and one tour de force acting turn can't recommend an ineffective treatment of a thorny topic.

THE DVD
The Artisan DVD release presents the "Director's Uncut Version" of Hostage High in a 1.33:1 full-frame transfer that preserves the original aspect ratio. The picture is bright and detailed–signs festooning the school's hallways are easy to read, even the headlines on a substitute teacher's newspaper are well-delineated. That said, it's apparent that Hostage High was shot for television on a limited budget: Its compositions are stock and its colours are limited to a muted palette. As one would probably suspect, the best usage of the film's Dolby Digital 5.1 track occurs with Jason's rampage. Dialogue is crisp and channel separation adequate, if not of showcase quality. There is a major but brief flaw in the sound late in the third act as the balance of the dialogue and effects fluctuates distractingly.

A feature-length commentary with producer Steve Natt and actor Winkler provides some interesting background information concerning the actual events that inspired the film's creation and a respect for the gravity of what Hostage High portrays. Some of the rougher moments are met with reverential exhalations of breath and whispered exclamations of "gosh" and "phew" that struck me as genuine. Of most interest to me was the revelation that Rick Schroder refused to speak with any of the cast and crew off camera, so immersed in his role was he. I really missed hearing Schroder and director Michael Watkins, the two greatest contributors to the film's marginal success. Cast and crew biographies and a trailer round out the disc.

93 minutes; R; 1.33:1; English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround, Spanish Dolby Surround; CC; Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Artisan