The Negotiator works because it had the right director and leads to pull it off. With a weak director, two poor leads like Reeves and Gere for their drawing power, and a bunch of rolled out pyro this would have been an * movie. The weakness of the movie is the setup is rather cookie cutter, and the movie is somewhat cliche, but it is excellent from the moment Spacey's character is introduced. Jackson and Spacey are tremendous as always though. This movie doesn't sell out to special effects. It's a movie where the two leads will clearly make or break it, and with Jackson and Spacey it obviously was the latter. They have great chemistry together, and allow the fact that the language of the negotiators goes beyond words to really work. The movie itself is extremely riveting with unrelenting tension. A strength of the movie is that Gray always moves forward instead of sitting on a point to make it stand out. The reason this is important is that every notable cop has at least one scene where they look like they could be in on it. This isn't a cheasy process of elimination movie. You may know some of the people who are in on it, but you aren't sure who stands where until the very end. Thus there can be no strong heels, but it doesn't fall into the trap of making Jackson a very strong face. Gray makes you care about several characters,even ones you wouldn't expect to care about.
The film is somewhat reminiscent of Die Hard, but it moves better and obviously has a superior lead, who gives a great performance.
The film is somewhat reminiscent of Die Hard, but it moves better and obviously has a superior lead, who gives a great performance.