| “ | When your friends betray you, sometimes the only people you can trust are strangers. | „ |
| ~ Roman's most famous line |
Danny Roman is the main protagonist of the 1998 action thriller, The Negotiator. He is a former Army soldier, good cop, an excellent hostage negotiator of the Chicago Police Department, and a devoted husband to his new wife, Karen Roman. But all of that changed when he is framed for both embezzlement and the murder of his partner Nathan Roenick. Suspended from the force and facing prison time, he takes hostages to prove his innocence and in the end, it's discovered that the real criminals are members of his unit are behind all of this and that they are arrested. Danny is eventually cleared.
He is portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson, who also played Zeus Carver in Die Hard with a Vengeance, Carl Lee Hailey in A Time to Kill, Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction, Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ray Arnold in Jurassic Park, Frozone in The Incredibles, and Mace Windu in the Star Wars prequel films.
The Negotiator[]
Danny is first seen in the opening with his partner, Nate Roenick and their team, trying to rescue a little girl from her armed and violent father trying to reason with him by going over a list of demands and get his wife so that they can release the girl, but are going nowhere and closes the door behind them. Despite Commander Adam Beck's orders to stand down, after he thinks that they lost contact, he goes in anyway by pretending that they have his wife. As he goes in, Danny and Nate's fellow officer Grant Frost, tells the SWAT team to hold their position, while his fellow colleagues, Hellman, Allen and Argento go to release the girl while Danny gives a finger count to three to the nearby SWAT snipers Palermo and Eagle at a nearby shopping store to neutralize the man. After the three count, the snipers fire the rifle into the man's shoulder, successfully ending the situation.
While celebrating the 60th birthday of their commanding officer and close friend, Chief Al Travis, Danny is praised by their colleagues, including Beck; although he is proud of him that he took down the gunman, he still managed to put everybody's life in jeopardy and if he'd been taken hostage, he would've messed everything up. Danny believed him and said that everybody lived, including Beck himself. Nate approaches Danny and tells him that an informant of his, whom he hasn't named, has told him that a few members of their team has been embezzling large amounts of stolen money from the precient's disability fund. He also tells him that the informant hasn't talked to Internal Affairs because he thinks that IAD investigator Terrance Niebaum ias involved. They soon leave as Danny goes back to his house to be with Karen.
While there, he receives a call from Nate via pager, revealing that they have to have another meeting. While sitting in his car and waiting for Danny, a man wearing a wool cap approaches Roenick and fatally shoots him in the head with a handgun. He takes the gun and pager and throws them in the lake then takes off running. Danny pulls up and finds that Nate has been murdered. A couple of seconds later, two police officers arrive and Danny tells them that Nate has been killed. At the office, Niebaum attempts to get Roman to talk, but he refuses to talk and angrily storms out of the office along with Frost, who tells Niebaum to back down. After Nate's funeral, Danny is approached by his colleagues, including Niebaum who has a search warrant to look inside his house, who tells him that the recovered gun used to kill Roenick was linked to a case that Danny was working a few years ago. Niebaum and his team find papers for an offshore bank account, though Roman says that it wasn't his and that Niebaum planted the papers. Over at the police station, Danny is forced to surrender his gun and badge to Travis until further notice.
At the city courthouse, Nate's widow Linda angrily blames Danny for her husband's death, despite Danny not being the perpetrator. While talking to the prosecutor, he tells Roman that he will give him one day to make a deal and after that they'll be no more negotiating and that they will arrest him and face the maximum penalty (possibly life in prison). He tells him to come back tomorrow with the decision and he leaves in anger. When the prosecutor's assistants tell him that they can't do anything else, Danny decides to take matters into his own hands, although he remembers his promise to Karen when he says that crazy is on the bus. She goes out into the car and Danny storms into Neibaum's office; there, he is chatting with his assistant Maggie, con-man Rudy Timmons and a few of his investigators when Roman comes in and demands that Niebaum know something. Niebaum refuses to talk and has one of his men escort him out of his office. However, Danny has other plans and decides to take him, Maggie and Rudy hostage.
Danny walks out holding Niebaum hostage and fires a warning shot at one of the detectives, nearly missing him and tells the other cops to put their guns on the table and move out. Shortly after, Frost comes in and tells him that the building is on lock down. Danny tells him that he has already joined the party and takes Frost hostage too. Frost tries to reason with Roman, but to no avail. Maggie tells Danny that she has been mugged twice, one time at gunpoint, and Danny knows Rudy; in 1992, he arrested him for credit card fraud. Roman's colleagues set up roadblocks to prevent any civilians from going in, while Travis, Beck and Farley set up command at a barge, and a couple of FBI agents come in soon after since it's a federal building. Eagle and Palermo take up position on top of a near-by building. The team sets up cameras on top of a few floors. Roman tells Rudy to answer the phone, he does and Farley tells him that he wants to talk to him. But Danny tells him that he only wants to talk to Chris Sabian, the city's other top negotiator from the department's west precinct. He does so and they contact him.
Sabian, while trying to negotiate a truce between his wife and their daughter, receives the call and rushes to the scene, being that he's only got 20 minutes. Farley gets on the phone and tries to talk Danny down, but Danny decides to stall him by playing a game. Everything goes smoothly until Farley keeps saying "No", causing Danny to fire his gun in the air and angrily telling Farley to get Sabian; Rudy hangs up the phone and they have lost contact. A few moments later, after a little bit of talking to Frost, Danny decides to talk to his fellow officers and other people on the radio and tells them that they need to understand that he had no choice. His life was being taking away from him and that he was trying to tell everyone that he was being set up, but they wouldn't listen. He tells everyone that they have four minutes to get Sabian, or he'll shoot the hostages. After questioning Niebaum, Sabian shows up just in time and Danny offers his list of demands to him: his badge brought to him, a department funeral if he dies, and finding both the informant and the killer. Sabian introduces himself to Danny's team, then goes in.
Danny takes Rudy at gunpoint and has a face to face conversation with Sabian. But as they are getting to the bottom of things, he hears commotion in the office. Sabian runs back downstairs as a SWAT team enters the office, via smashing the windows. In the process, Roman is shot in the arm. He points his gun at Frost's head, telling them to drop their weapons or he'll kill him if they don't. They do so anyway and surrender, with Danny taking Officers Marcus and Scott Hostage too. When Beck calls for Palermo to take the shot, he refuses and is relieved. Sabian runs back into the barge and tells Travis to give him full command temporarily. After announcing himself as a member of the team, Danny tells Beck that he is still alive. After he gloats to the snipers to kill him, he takes Scott into another room and pistol whips him. Karen comes on the radio to try and talk to him, but he refuses and fires his gun at Scott. The SWAT team cuts the power and Maggie tells Danny that Niebaum keeps his files on the computer.
Sabian comes up and Roman tells him to turn the power back on so he can look at the files on the computer in exchange for Frost. While he and Rudy are looking at the files, they find a lot of wiretaps on the computer; one of the taps has Roman's and Roenick's voices on it. Danny finds out that Niebaum was lying to him all along and punches him in the face. Another wiretap has Nate talking to Linda the night before he died. Danny calls Chris and tells him to get in touch with Linda to find out where she was the night before Roenick died (it's later revealed at the end that she went to see Danny) in exchange for another hostage.
A few moments later, Sabian comes in with the informant, Sergeant Cale Wangro. Cale tells Roman that he was with Roenick before he was killed. But, then, Danny finds out that Nate was the actual informant, and that Sabian was bluffing the whole time while Danny pieces the scheme together: corrupt officers submitted false disability claims that were processed by an unknown insider on the disability fund's board. When Danny threatens to expose Niebaum to an open window so that he can be vulnerable to snipers, Niebaum tells him that Nate came to him with wiretaps, which implicate Hellman, Argento and Allen in the embezzlement fraud. He also received a bribe from them to cover their crimes up and they even offered Nate the same money, but he refused and they killed him for it.
When the corrupt officers hear this, they secretly enter the building via the air ducts and open fire on Danny and the hostages and, in the chaos, murder Niebaum. Thankfully, Danny uses the flashbangs that he confiscated from the two SWAT officers to fend them off. Danny tends to the fallen inspector, but he dies. After Sabian and Beck have an argument over who shot first, the FBI relieve Sabian of his command, cease all negotiations and order a full breech. Back at the office, as Danny prepares to be arrested, Maggie tells him that Niebaum also worked at his house and could've kept Nate's taps there. When Sabian comes up, He warns Danny about the FBI's plan. Danny asks if Beck ordered the breach, to which Sabian says it was, but that Beck thinks that Danny fired first and his men responded with Niebaum's death being an accident. However, Danny shows Sabian that Niebaum was murdered as he has 3 bullets in his center-mass. Danny also shows him that Scott is still alive.
With the FBI proceeding to siege the building and rescue the hostages, Danny, disguised as a SWAT member, escapes the building after the agents search Chris' car. While interrogating the hostages into finding out where Danny is, Rudy gives them nothing, but Maggie tells Travis that he went to Niebaum's house to get the wiretaps. The corrupt officers head there together. Danny and Chris get on the computer to find the wiretaps but find nothing. A few minutes later, Argento, Allen and Hellman arrive and Danny decides to get them to confess. As they are about to, Frost comes in and tries to talk him down. Sabian observes Frost discreetly taking a loaded gun from one of the corrupt officers and realizes that Frost is the ringleader of the conspiracy, the insider on the disability fund and Nate's killer. In front of Frost, Sabian seemingly shoots Danny dead and offers to destroy the "evidence" they have uncovered in return for a cut of Frost's take. Frost agrees and effectively makes a full admission to his and the three officers' crimes. He then destroys the floppy disks and shoots Niebaum's Computer.
When Frost exits the house, he discovers that Sabian only wounded Danny, who used a police radio to broadcast his confession. Humiliated, Frost attempts to commit suicide, but Beck foils it by shooting him in the shoulder. As Beck handcuffs Frost, Sabian helps the wounded Danny out of the house. Danny prepares to fatally shoot Frost for the setup, but gives the gun to Beck before returning in pain as Frost and the other corrupt officers are taken into custody and eventually imprisoned for life for their crimes. Danny is taken to an ambulance, where Sabian gives him his badge and the film ends.
Quotes[]
"'Cause I'm not going to jail today.