When it was aired on ABC Television, Hostage High was dubbed Detention: The Siege at Johnson High, which is a horrible name, even for network television. Of course, the standards are always slightly lower for made-for-television movies than they are for “real” films. TV movies are handicapped in a number of ways: they have rigid running time limitations (gotta leave enough room for commercials and station breaks); no profanity is allowed (no really good profanity, anyway); very little onscreen violence is permitted; and, there’s usually a modest budget for acting talent. The preceding are all reasons why movies made for cable networks – free of at least some of those limitations – are considerably cooler than those made for the big networks, and they come with little or no stigma attached. But Hostage High is not remotely cool, and it has quite a stigma – it’s a Freddie Prinze Jr. film.
Hostage High is based on an actual hostage incident at Johnson High School in Northern California, which can excuse some of the slight storyline, but certainly not all of it. Post-secondary loser Jason Copeland (Rick Schroder) decides to shoot up his alma mater, apparently because he feels screwed out of a diploma and, consequently, out of any chance at a good life. (“Screwed” is a word that comes up a lot in movies like Hostage High, and you can really feel the absence of actual swearing in many scenes.) It sure would’ve been nice to have a juicier motivation for such a desperate act, but I kinda respect the producers’ nod to authenticity.
What I can’t respect, though, is the absence of subplots, motifs, characterization – you know, cinematic literary stuff – and the presence of Freddie Prinze Jr. Just because a movie is based on an actual event doesn’t mean it should have all the art and energy of a traffic report. Perhaps the casting of Prinze as Aaron, a student hostage who tries to help the police from inside the besieged school, is an attempt to add tension to the proceedings. After all, who wants to think of dozens of children’s lives in the hands of a guy who doesn’t seem to understand what his own lines mean and who shuts his gaping pie-hole exactly five times in the course of the movie?
The plot, script and direction are all perfunctory, as are most of the performances. Scenes of courage and sacrifice by students seem underplayed, while the clichéd tension between law enforcement organizations and one cop trying to make a difference is tediously overemphasized. With the exception of Prinze, there might have been some good acting in this movie that was ignored by the director or lost by the editor. One pleasantly surprising exception is Rick (“Not Ricky!!”) Schroder’s performance as Jason, the unhinged gunman. Looking like Kurt Cobain might have on his last day, Schroder plays Jason with a nihilistic fury that’s nicely set off and rather creepily underscored by occasional sparks of vulnerability and childlike hope.
But if all you’re looking for is an interesting performance by Schroder, stick to NYPD Blue reruns. Hostage High is about as much fun as a long detention.
