FBI: Negotiator (2005)

Laura Martin (Elisabeth Röhm) is a single mom and an FBI negotiator replacing the sexist angry veteran Agent Carlo. She's secretly dating her superior Frank Gerrard. Her daughter Taylor is best friends with sickly Annie Moss (Britt McKillip) and her mother Elizabeth (Chandra West). Annie is desperate for a transplant. Laura is sidelined after a difficult negotiation and then Elizabeth takes hostages at the hospital to get her daughter into an experimental trial.This is a TV movie. It is awkwardly clunky at times. It can't exceed its TV essence. The leads are fine actors. It pushes the melodrama too hard. It struggles to be something more. None of it is anything exception.

We begin "4 Days Earlier" with the robbery of a convenience store. It becomes a dangerous hostage situation. The swaying, shaky camera-work is dizzying and makes it difficult to watch. But this effect is used mainly for the hostage situations. The significance of "4 Days" is unclear, and action likely changes to the present somewhere early in the running time. Our heroine is pretty blonde FBI agent Elizabeth Rohm (as Laura Martin). She specializes in hostage situations; when a mishap incurs a lawsuit, she is given an unplanned vacation. Divorced a year, Ms. Rohm dates her FBI agent partner, athletically-built Woody Jeffreys (as Frank Gerrard)...Rohm's teen daughter Taylor-Anne Reid (as Taylor) misses her dad and resents Mr. Jeffreys horning in on the family. They are friendly with pretty blonde housewife Chandra West (as Elizabeth "Beth" Moss) and her teen daughter Britt McKillip (as Annie Moss). Unfortunately, Ms. West's daughter is deathly ill. When mother West learns her daughter's experimental medication will be discontinued, she becomes desperate. It climaxes with a hostage situation at "Burnaby Hospital". The mother/daughter scenes are nice, Jerry Wasserman (as Jon Di Carlo) and the supporting cast add some spark, but "FBI: Negotiator" never takes you hostage.*** FBI: Negotiator (10/24/05) Nicholas Kendall ~ Elizabeth Rohm, Chandra West, Woody Jeffreys, Taylor-Anne Reid

These comments could contain spoilers (see last paragraph), but the movie's script is so formulaic that there is really nothing in the plot to spoil.I first encountered this film's lead, Elisabeth Röhm, in the TV series, "Bull," and was so taken with her beauty that I missed if there were any defects in her acting (after all, to me, she was a "newcomer"). By the time she starred in "Law and Order," however, they started becoming evident; and I have to say that they haven't improved here...nothing really bad, just too much false emotion, i.e., there are times you can catch her "acting." The best performances here (IMO, and within the confines of the script), are by Chandra West as the mother of the ailing friend of FBI mom's daughter (played well by Taylor Anne Reid), and by Malcolm Stewart as the FBI boss (especially in the scene where he explains to Reid's character why she shouldn't be blaming her mom for her father's leaving).If there's a spoiler here, it's this: the movie's title promises a hostage negotiation thriller (which in a way it is), but the point of the drama is to highlight the potential fate of severely ill patients excluded from clinical trials, with the FBI mother and neglected daughter merely a predictable structure to fill out the time, and ultimately deliver the message. Otherwise, there is much better drama on series television, and every single point of this drama is tied up neatly in the end, leading to a pat conclusion.

At the start of the movie, a hostage situation ends badly. Well, maybe not that badly, but I won't say why.But FBI negotiator Laura Martin, who has been divorced for several years, has a bigger problem. Her daughter Taylor thinks Laura cares more about her job than her daughter. After all, Laura is late picking up Taylor from school.Taylor's bitterness is normal enough for a teenager (there is the obligatory locking herself in her room and turning up this so-called music so loud it makes the world go away). And one of her problems is that her mother is dating Frank, another FBI agent. She hates him. But Taylor's problems are minor compared to those of her best friend Annie.Annie may die soon unless she can get an experimental treatment from Barraby Hospital, which happens to be located in the same city where Annie lives. Annie's father has died, but at least he had a good insurance policy, so her mother Elizabeth can concentrate on caring for her daughter. Unfortunately, this hospital cannot afford to give the treatment Annie needs to everyone who wants it (at this stage, insurance won't help), and a lottery determines the "winners".Another hostage incident ends badly, this one at a prison that houses mentally ill patients. Laura doesn't follow procedure and she may lose her job (which would be fine with Agent Di Carlo, who she replaced). But she will have one chance to redeem herself.This movie was almost a total waste of time. It seemed like five minutes couldn't pass without Laura on the verge of crying or Taylor being a brat. There are some tender moments that last about three seconds. But then comes the one hostage incident that almost--ALMOST--makes the movie work. Still, there are unnecessary and ridiculous complications, and people who seem to have little regard for their fellow human beings--if you are a criminal, it seems you deserve to die just because you can be killed.Elisabeth Rohm had her occasional good moments, most of them related to her ability as a negotiator. Even if she doesn't always go by the book, she has the best of intentions. But there's nothing outstanding here.