Critic's Pick 'Hostages'

This film plunges you into the dark, vermin-infested cells of Lebanon, where six civilians held the world's attention as prisoners of Hezbollah terrorists from the mid-1980s to the release of the last prisoner, journalist Terry Anderson, in late 1991. This first dramatization (in 1993), well-directed by David Wheatley, of the kidnapings duly records Western refusal to deal with the terrorists while illuminating the activist roles of the prisoners' families. While the kidnapers brutalize and drive the hostages (Ciaran Hinds and Colin Firth, play two of them) to the edge, Bernard MacLaverty's script takes an unusually evenhanded look at the captors, carefully illuminating the motives for despising the United States and Israel. Kathy Bates and Natasha Richardson are among those playing the hostages' loved ones (HBO Thursday at 9 a.m.).