Shoot 'Em Up/Death Sentence/Hostage

Triple bill of US action thrillers. 'Shoot 'Em Up' (2007) stars Clive Owen as Smith, a down-and-out squatter with both an extensive military background and a fondness for carrots, who wants nothing more than to be left alone.

Smith finds himself embroiled in a complex political conspiracy once he aids a pregnant woman who is being chased by a hitman.

He takes the baby and goes on the run with a prostitute (Monica Bellucci).

The unlikely family is trailed by the intelligent and ruthless Hertz (Paul Giamatti) and his army of thugs.

In 'Death Sentence' (2007), Nick Hume (Kevin Bacon) is a mild-mannered executive with a perfect life until one gruesome night he witnesses something that changes him forever.

His family falls victim to a vicious attack perpetrated by a gang as part of its initiation ritual and his son is brutally murdered.

When Hume is failed by the judicial system he vows to track every person involved in the crime, and embarks on a vigilante mission which not only sets off a police investigation, but starts a cycle of violence that draws his whole family into the politics of the gang who perpetrated the crime.

Hume eventually comes to the disturbing conclusion that no length is too great when protecting his family.

Finally, 'Hostage' (2005) is based on the novel by Robert Crais.

Haunted by his failure to save a child from a suicidal madman, hostage negotiator Jeff Tally (Bruce Willis) leaves Los Angeles to become police chief of upscale suburb Bristo Camino.

But the ghosts of Tally's past come back to haunt him when two brothers and their mysterious travelling companion Mars Krupchek (Ben Foster) take a suburbanite family hostage after a failed robbery.

The hostage is actually a numbers runner for West Coast kingpin Sonny Benza, and the house contains evidence that put Benza away.

Facing heat from associates in New York, Benza kidnaps Tally's wife and daughter and blackmails him into procuring the incriminating evidence.

But the situation escalates even further when Tally discovers that Mars is a serial killer who is eyeing the hostages, and possibly his accomplices, to be his next victims.