Twists in the Movie, The Negotiator

The Negotiator is about a veteran police officer played by Samuel L. Jackson who finds himself with his world turned inside out. He is a heroic hostage negotiator for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) but, during the course of film his job and life are threatened by a pension scam for which he is set up to take the fall. He enlists the help of an outside police officer, Kevin Spacey, to help him find the real thief. The movie is full of different negotiations and tactics. This paper will analyze different types of conflicts, how trust can be gained and used, different thinking strategies, and biasness of other interested parties from the film.

The first scene is how Jackson cleverly outwits a crazy newly divorced man from a hostage child through negotiation and the different conflicts he has to conquer. This scene has both personal conflict with the hostage taker and task conflict with Jackson and the SWAT team. The difference between the conflicts is emotions where personal is emotional with its connection with anger, ego, and tension and task is based on the idea or plan merits to solve a problem. (Thompson, 2005) The man is demanding to the police to acquire his ex-wife who apparently cheated on him with another man. First, Jackson tries to gain trust with the hostage taker by talking about something on a common ground, his dogs, this gives trust by building a similarity. Then, pressed for time, he speeds up the delicate negotiation by entering the barricaded apartment to avoid the SWAT team from entering and likely killing the hostage. This allows for more trust by having a physical presence inside the apartment. Jackson tells the man that his wife is on the way and he needs to inspect the apartment to ensure no mo...

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...iction of crisis and hostage negotiations. Various daily negotiations do not have the stakes this high and it brings to light how intellect will win over emotions every time. Jackson needed to seem radical and reckless to have the LAPD take him seriously but his every step was calculated on bringing the guilty party to justice and giving him his life back. Jackson’s BATNA was lose his entire life by being thrown in jail and that was not acceptable to him, so he would rather die trying to clear his name than spend the majority of his life in jail and lose his wife and career. The trust and communication that was given and taken was a brilliant example of how people essentially must feel in order to negotiate with each other. (Thompson, 2005) The change from divergent thinking between Jackson and Spacey to a convergent thinking at the end was fascinating to watch.