Truth be told, it is the acting that elevates The Negotiator, though not just the acting of Spacey and Jackson. The supporting roles are populated by the likes of Ron Rifkin, David Morse, the late J.T. Walsh (in his final role), and Paul Giamatti (whose frequent, funny character roles are turning him into something of a national treasure). Meanwhile, Jackson gets to go all out as a Chicago hostage negotiator who takes hostages of his own after he's framed for murder and embezzlement. Spacey is a negotiator from another precinct who may be the only lawman that Jackson can trust.

The tension generated by such hoary clichés cop endangered by other cops, a race against time to find the truth, etc. is a credit to screenwriters James DeMonaco and David Fox, who play bait-and-switch with the plot so many times that the audience remains in the dark up to the closing scene. Also laudable is director F. Gary Gray, who can place this film alongside his underrated Set It Off as an example of how to establish a clean, compelling narrative out of material that could easily have been rendered incomprehensible. His only real mistake? Using composer Graeme Revell, whose bombastic score lends too much operatic overkill to this otherwise gut-level story.

Ultimately, though, this film really is a showcase for its leads, who work with and against each other in ways that are exciting to watch. As two men who know the tricks of each other's trade, Jackson and Spacey match wits in a series of moves and countermoves not unlike a chess game. There's plenty of action in The Negotiator, but the body-count is minimal this is a situation where brains matter more than bullets. To that end, there's no better actor for the job than Kevin Spacey, who is at his best when he's considering the angles and even lying outright to the other characters. (Think of Glengarry Glen Ross, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and his Oscar-winning turn in The Usual Suspects.)

The problem is, when Spacey is offscreen, Jackson flounders. He doesn't play off his stellar supporting cast as well as he does against Spacey; he overwhelms them with his big voice and cool charisma. This is becoming a problem with Sam Jackson, whom I daresay has been overrated as a leading man. Jackson has greatness in him he was brilliant in Jungle Fever, 187, The Great White Hype, and especially Pulp Fiction but he's begun to coast on a shticky acting style. Look at A Time to Kill or Sphere, in which he shifted from flat, rapid line readings to throaty shouts with little or no motivation. He was better in Jackie Brown, but even there he tended to lapse into a grating, inflectionless rap (until Robert Forster showed up to keep him honest).

Jackson is a fine actor, and has presence to spare, but if he doesn't watch out, he'll become like William Hurt or John Malkovich actors who dominated the '80s but are now wan parodies of their former greatness. The Negotiator is being received by many as the anointing of Sam Jackson, but it really just reconfirms the quality of Kevin Spacey. Jackson's canonization remains...well, negotiable.