There's an interesting audience response to this movie. The director has captured the audience in the movie theater and forced it to take
a look at the handgun issue...not by getting the audience's attention with car chases and breasts heaving up and down while sexy things run, like in an action film, but with a hostage taking. And everyone's in the trap, including the audience.
The hostage and the guy pointing the gun (Wesley Snipes) are trapped in their standoff for most of the film. Meanwhile layers peal away as we begin to understand more and more about the source of the pain and the reason for the target of the desperate action.
The audience likes to be on the side of some main character who is outside of the stand-off, the person that will cause strength and good to prevail; but the director has ingeniously put the audience identification into the stand-off: equally into the emotional trauma of both the hostage and the hostage taker. Eventually you begin to feel the absurdity and desperation of the situation; eventually you realize that both feel trapped, and consequently the audience has little relief from the situation.
There's no Arnold Schwarzenegger coming to the rescue by blazing bigger more illegal weapons, and that is exactly what is intended, in my opinion. The big pay-off in this film is that it actually makes the audience think! Uncomfortable for some, but certainly worthwhile as a political statement and interesting filmmaking.
