HOLLYWOOD - Hostages and POWs attempt to subdue their captors this President's Day holiday weekend as Hollywood heavyweights Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis battle for box office supremacy.Lurking in the shadows, however, is pop songbird Britney Spears, whose Crossroads opens Friday against Washington's John Q, Willis' Hart's War, Disney's Peter Pan sequel Return to Never Land and the police parody Super Troopers.
Washington, who received an Oscar nomination Tuesday for his role as a corrupt cop in Training Day, looks set to prove once again that when he's bad, he's good at the box office. In the process, John Q will knock off Arnold Schwarzenegger's Collateral Damage as the No. 1 film.
Director Nick Cassavetes' scabrous but preposterously executed attack on HMOs, election year politics and media chicanery stars Washington as a father unable to afford the heart transplant operation that his young son desperately needs. So Washington does what every church-going, blue-collar family man does: hold hostage the patients awaiting treatment at an E.R. and force his son's doctor (James Woods) at gunpoint to perform the lifesaving operation.
The dubious moral of the story--that one must resort to violence in order to overcome bureaucratic red tape--will be lost amid the cheers destined to accompany Washington's every speech and threat. To that extent, John Q should triumph where the similarly themed Mad City failed in 1997 and enjoy an opening weekend that should exceed the $10.5 million total of that Costa-Gavras' misfire by perhaps $3 million. It helps that Washington is on roll after scoring with The Bone Collector ($66.4 million), The Hurricane ($50.6 million), Remember the Titans ($115.6 million) and Training Day ($76.2 million).
Washington's The Siege co-star Willis will provide the stiffest competition for John Q. The two tussled in the fall, when Washington's Training Day fended off Willis' underachieving Bandits with relative ease.
Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan rekindled interest in World War II. The Sept. 11 attacks also left audiences hungry for war sagas, resulting in the subsequent successes of Black Hawk Down ($89.2 million through Thursday) and Behind Enemy Lines ($58 million).
A thoughtful mediation on racism within the U.S. army's ranks, Hart's War pits Willis against Colin Farrell in a courtroom thriller set within the confines of a German POW camp. Willis, the camp's highest-ranking American officer, orders Farrell to defend a black pilot (Terrence Howard) during a murder trial that isn't quite what it seems.
Romance drove such recent World War II sagas as Pearl Harbor, Enemy at the Gates, Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Charlotte Gray. Hart's War offers no such diversion, which could keep away those most likely to swoon at the sight of a pretty boy in uniform. Hart's War, however, should score with those who turned U-571 into a $79 million hit in 2000. Also, it helps that director Gregory Hoblit knows his way around a courtroom. His Primal Fear earned $56 million in 1996 and propelled Edward Norton to fame. Hart's War could do the same for Farrell, who became such a hot property after the critically acclaimed but hardly seen Tigerland that he replaced Norton in Hart's War, Matt Damon in Spielberg's Minority Report and Jim Carrey in Phone Booth.
Accordingly, Hart's War should match the $13.8 million that Enemy at the Gates opened with this time last year.
Hart's War will likely steal audiences away from the bloody Black Hawk Down, especially since director Ridley Scott's Somalia-set saga failed to secure a Best Picture Oscar nomination this week. Hart's War, though, faces extreme competition on March 1 in the form of Mel Gibson's Vietnam epic We Were Soldiers.