A strange, fascinating and probably seminal film: not so much the hostage situation as the situation of hostage as celebrity - a concept nobody's explored before. After 36 days of being held by an obscure terrorist group - an epic siege that ends in a shootout with every minute being shown on national TV at the insistence of the terrorists - Cliff Spab (Stephen Dorff) finds himself trapped in the limelight. Everybody wants a piece of the man worshipped by millions for his don't care attitudes. Dorff is excellent, but Reese Witherspoon is not entirely well cast as his vis-à-vis, the girl from the better side of the tracks who's the five-week siege's only other survivor. The hot young cast also includes Joey Lauren Adams and Tobey Maguire.

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