Review of Firewall (2006) by James R — 23 Sep 2010

So for 2006, its year of release, Firewall is probably one of the least original films that could have been made. The ideas of hacking an impassable computer security system and of a clever protagonist having to think himself out of a similarly clever setup have been done in various forms a hundred times before and since--and Harrison Ford has appeared in several of them. So the deck was already stacked against this film from the start.

The nice thing about that, though, is that it gave Firewall a chance to show that it had more going for it than an aging action star and a recycled plot--and while the film didn't have TOO much more than that, it did have more than I expected it to. In particular, Paul Bettany showed great poise and villainy in his role; watching him is definitely the film's highlight. Robert Forster and Virginia Madsen are bright spots also, and Ford brings his usual gravitas to the lead. And for all that it was not particularly original in concept, the elaborate setup of the protagonist and the ways he finds to get around it were fun to watch.

So really, while Firewall played more like a film from 1999 than from 2006, it delivered a much more powerful punch than I thought it would, and I don't regret watching it at all.