Ever since I’ve started taking writing seriously, I’ve begun to notice good story telling not only in books but also film as well. While I don’t think anyone will confuse The Negotiator with an amazing film (in fact it lost money, but I am skeptical of that, perhaps Hollywood has fun accounting tricks to avoid taxes), I do think the intro demonstrates some solid story telling techniques. spoilers ahead The film opens with a hostage situation. A man is demanding to see his wife, so he can commit suicide in front of her. He is holding their daughter hostage with a shotgun pointed at her head. Danny Roman is the lead negotiator for the police and is trying to talk the hostage taker down. Beck is a scene commander for the police and wants to breach (to send the police in to neutralize the hostage taker). Roman is worried that the girl may be killed if they breach, so he goes off procedure and risks his life to save her. He pretends they are ready to send in the wife, but he has to inspect the apartment first. The hostage taker holds him at gunpoint while Roman inspects. Roman leads him into a bedroom where a sniper has a line of sight to, and on Roman’s signal the sniper shoots the hostage taker, disabling him. Roman grabs the shotgun, and his calm and cool demeanor evaporates, replaced by rage as he points the shotgun at the hostage taker’s face. He is so enraged he is trembling, and his partner has to calm him down and pull the shotgun out of his hands. Why does this work for me? Instant hook with high stakes and drama. If this goes wrong a little girl or Roman may die. The audience is expecting to see a hostage movie - that is paid off immediately. Delays the actual plot line. I don’t think this is ipso facto good, but Act I is about setting the stage and players for a pension fund fraud scheme and a murder. I think that would have been a little boring if we didn’t have the hook to invest us in the characters Roman’s characterization. He can be cool as can be in an extremely high stakes situation, but you can see the rage that is boiling underneath. Most importantly, it’s a great save the cat moment. Roman does some horrible things later in the film. He takes hostages, some are innocent. Some of them die. Yet we are supposed to cheer for him as the good guy. If we didn’t see him put his life at risk to save the little girl, it would be hard for us to consider him the good guy. Just some thoughts on a Sunday morning. Hope you are all having a good weekend.
It's a pretty decent film and it set up a scene later on quite nicely where they are trying to negotiate with Roman for the first time and he wipes the floor with an inexperienced negotiator. The line about Rauol, the dog, was nicely done as well in that opening scene. Personally I didnt like the rage with the shotgun part - too americanised gung ho gargbage imo, but at the same time you can say it shows Romans tempremant so that it doesnt come as so much of a surprise when hes forced to do what he does later on.
