Hostage - Filming Locations

Actual Southern California locations where the 2005 film "Hostage" was shot.

The film starts with a hostage situation in a residential home, which ends tragically.
A distraught man has barricaded himself in his home, taking his wife and young son hostage.
SWAT has set up their operations on the roof of an industrial building next door to the house,
and when we first see Bruce Willis, he is on the roof of that building, talking to the barricaded
man on a cell phone, trying to convince him to give himself up.

This first scene was shot in East L.A., on the west side of the Boyle Heights neighborhood,
just across the L.A. River from (east of) Little Tokyo, in an area where residential homes
mix with warehouses & factories. The small home is actually at 115 S. Utah Street
(at the northwest corner of S. Utah Street & Mono Street), in East Los Angeles.

[Remember: this is a private home. Do not knock on their door, trespass
on their property, or do anything else to disturb the residents.]

The large, yellow building where Bruce (and the SWAT snipers) worked on the roof
is, in reality, located just to the south of the home, at 210 South Anderson Street.
It is "California Costume Collections Inc"; it manufactures costumes and toys.

(The stairs Bruce runs down are located on the east side of that building.)

[Warning: this location may be in a high-crime area. Exercise reasonable caution.]

The central drama begins when a group of creeps spot 'Jennifer Smith' (Michelle Horn) entering a local market.
She returns an obscene gesture from one of them, and they follow her home.

The sign on the store says "Kim's Market & Deli", and it's supposed to be in "Bristo Camino in Ventura County",
but don't you believe it. They filmed this scene up in the hills of the chic/rustic community of Topanga, CA,
in the Malibu area. The market is actually the Country Natural Food Store, at 415 S. Topanga Canyon Blvd.

As the creeps watch Jennifer's Cadillac Escalade pull into the parking lot of "Kim's", we can see behind
her, Fernwood Market, which is located at 446 S. Topanga Canyon Blvd, in Topanga, just around
the corner from (about 250 feet southeast of) the Country Natural Food Store
(see the photo below - the red awning to the right).

(The Pritchett-Rapf real estate office, next door then, has since moved to a new location on the same street.)

The bad guys follow Jennifer back to her father's home ("Walter Smith's house"), a dramatic structure
perched atop a craggy hill. Of course, it's not in "Bristo Camino". It's just 3 miles southeast
of Kim's market, at 2960 Tuna Canyon Road, in the Topanga area, near Malibu.

It is here that most of the movie's action takes place, after the creeps take Jennifer
and her brothers hostage (and shadowy figures force Bruce to try to rescue them).

[The camera is looking south in the photo above.]

[Remember: this is a private home. Do not knock on their door, trespass
on their property, or do anything else to disturb the residents.]

The climax of the movie, the bloody showdown between Bruce Willis and the masked kidnappers, takes
place at the Canyon Inn. The Canyon Inn is real, but it's a long way from Malibu - about 50 miles east.

The Inn was actually at 2280 N. San Gabriel Canyon Road, in the hills of north Azusa.
(That's at the junction of N. San Gabriel Canyon Road and Old San Gabriel Canyon Road.)

Alas, the Canyon Inn is no more. After sitting empty for a decade,
it was finally torn down after this 2005 "Hostage" shoot. (The land was purchased
by the El Monte-based International Theological Seminary, which planned to build there.)

The photos on this page are stills from the DVD of "Hostage"
(which you can buy by clicking here) and are copyright Miramax Pictures.