Well, heck. I'd been meaning to rent this for quite a while now, mostly because it had two of my favorite actors – Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey. Don't get me wrong, I've suffered through Kiss of Death and Edison Force and know that the presence of Jackson or Spacey isn't a 100 percent guarantee of quality, but I figured that the pairing would be at least be fun – sort of the cinematic equivalent of a Reese's peanut butter cup.

Sadly, The Negotiator is not a bad movie, just blah on nearly every level. I wanted a Reese's peanut butter cup and got toast. Heck.

In Chicago, Lieutenant Danny Roman (Jackson) is a well-respected hostage negotiator. But Roman has been informed by a friend in the police department that scandal is afoot with embezzlement from the pension fund. Soon Roman's friend is killed and Roman is being set up for the killing and for the embezzlement. Faced with losing everything, Roman takes hostages in the Internal Affairs department. Convinced that he can trust no one in his own precinct, Roman calls for a negotiator from another precinct, Lieutenant Chris Sabian (Spacey). Sabian has to help keep the situation under control and help Roman prove his innocence.

It should be exciting. It should be tense. There should be lots of sharp dialogue. But The Negotiator just sort of ambles along, wasting the potential of its lead actors.

The direction by F. Gary Gray is surprisingly lifeless, taking far too long to set up the situation. Gray and screenwriters David DeMonaco and Kevin Fox make three fatal errors: they make it clear from the start that Roman is innocent, depriving the situation of ambiguity and tension; the central mystery is both totally predictable and unnecessarily muddled, so by the end you're not sure who did what but you don't care either; and they give the characters of Roman and Sabian almost no screen time or interaction together.

This last flaw is what kills the movie – Jackson and Spacey are powerful enough actors to be able to sustain interest even if all they did was talk to each other for 90 minutes – I'd so watch that. But Jackson's character seems strangely removed from the proceedings after the movie's first third or so. Spacey fares a bit better, although he isn't introduced until 45 minutes into the movie (he gets a clever intro as it appears his character is in a hostage negotiation when really he's mediating  a spat between his wife and his daughter). But mostly his character is stuck with telling the police not to do stupid things and then yelling at them when they do stupid things. Neither actor gets a role they can really do justice to. Acting honors actually go to a baby-faced Paul Giamatti, in a minor role as a weaselly informant who ends up being one of the hostages.

The Negotiator isn't a bad movie, but in the end it's so unmemorable you're left wondering why it was even made. Too bad.

The DVD looks nice and shows off the Chicago locations well. Extras include some decent featurettes.