At one point during Hostages, I thought there might actually be a good performance in it somewhere. Czech freedom fighter Katina Paxinou faces off with her mother over her Resistance work. It has the potential for a good moment, turns out it’s just an adequate one (amid the sea of inadequate ones in the film). Because there aren’t any good moments. It’s not like leads Luise Rainer and Arturo de Córdova have an iota of chemistry. Or like William Bendix out of nowhere gives a great performance as a famous Czech Resistance fighter (he doesn’t; he’s godawful). Maybe Oskar Homolka as the sniveling collaborator has the closest thing to a good moment, but director Tuttle doesn’t showcase it.

Tuttle doesn’t showcase anything in Hostages. He’s astoundingly disinterested in the film, going through the same series of setups, one after the other. Two shot, four shot, three shot. They all look exactly the same. It’s fine; it’s not like Archie Marshek would do any better with good shots. Even with the tepid ones, Marshek’s cuts screw up performances. They’re not going to be great performances (Lester Cole and Frank Butler’s script is even flatter than Tuttle’s direction) but they could be better. Marshek messes up Rainer the most. She’s already got a lousy role and bad cuts take away any hope for her to improve it. Though, again, she’s not really interested in it. No one’s got any enthusiasm.

Hostages is about Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. Homolka is the collaborating coal millionaire. Rainer’s his daughter. Roland Varno’s her fiancé. Homolka gets rounded up on a bum charge with Bendix (who’s masquerading as a washroom attendant—spoiler, no toilets or sinks) and twenty-four other innocent people. The Nazis (led by Paul Lukas) are going to shoot them. See, the Nazis know it’s a bum charge but they want to steal the coal business from Homolka. de Córdova is the seemingly collaborative newspaperman who’s actually a Resistance fighter. It’s kind of obvious when you think about it but, even though Lukas is better at his job than the other Nazis, is actually really bad at his job.

So Varno and Rainer go to de Córdova needing his help to get Homolka released, while de Córdova wants to get Bendix released, while Lukas isn’t releasing anyone no matter what because coal. Eventually Rainer gets pulled in the Resistance, symbolically rejecting her collaborative father and fiancé, but not really giving Rainer anything approaching acting material. Everything comes out in bad exposition, sometimes god-awfully performed by Bendix.

While Bendix is woefully miscast in the film—he obviously is wrong for the part (and the only Yank amid foreign stars)—for a while you can at least pity him. But then Hostages gets even more tedious and it’s often thanks to Bendix’s bad acting. And then you realize you’re only a half hour in and there’s another hour and, wow, how did they mess this one up. The film doesn’t care about the titular Hostages, just Homolka and Bendix. There’s no saccharine introduction to the rest of the prisoners. The film’s mercenary in its disinterest.

It also has a cop out ending, which is the final nail. It was never going to go out well, but it goes out at its weakest. Okay, maybe not it’s weakest weakest because Bendix at least isn’t monologuing, which he does often and badly.