Review of Firewall (2006) by Josh G — 20 Mar 2009

Firewall is a tense action thriller starring Harrison Ford. Er, excuse me - what I meant to say was: Firewall is a tepid action groaner containing Harrison Ford.

Let me tell you what happens, and then we'll get into what doesn't happen.

Harrison Ford plays Jack Stanfield, a tech whiz for a large chain of banks. Within the first ten minutes of the movie, plot "twists" that will become important in the final third are being set up in painfully obvious ways. Be careful, son, not to eat peanuts... since you're deathly allergic to them. Thanks, Dad! Oh, and don't use your RC car near any television sets in the house, as the AA batteries in the remote control somehow implausibly disrupt all television signals. Oh, and don't forget that we got that tracking device implanted in our dog Rusty's dog collar, not that that will be of any importance in the movie at all.

It's not long before Jack's entire family is taken hostage by Paul Bettany (The DaVinci Code) and his group of metrosexual thugs, all part of a bigger, flawless plan to steal all the money from Jack's place of business. Bettany, as Bill Cox, has been watching Stanfield and his family for some time, learning as much about them as possible, so that he can make it seem as though life is going normally. When the phone rings, he answers with a terrible accent, claiming to be Jack Stanfield. He knows that Jack's son has a peanut allergy. For some reason, he doesn't seem to know about the dog's tracking device collar, but, I mean, well, that, that.. that won't be important at all, right?

Despite the inclusion of many actors that you will recognize, kind of, from other movies - Virginia Madsen, the guy who played T-1000, Robert Forster from Dragon Wars, Alan Arkin - the film is very flat. None of the actors give anything to the film. Robert Forster gives a half-hearted performance (he's not that great an actor anyway) as a pretty much pointless minor character, and still manages to out-act Harrison Ford, the weakest of all the players in the movie. Bettany exudes evil, but doesn't really do anything to achieve that other than just being Paul Bettany.

The hostage plot does not keep you on the edge of your seat, as it quickly becomes obvious that the family is in no real danger and no matter how many times Jack disobeys his captors, they have no intention of responding with any sort of force. At one point, in order to intimidate the Stanfield family, Cox murders one of his own men. Um.. okay? To complement the gripping hostage situation going on at the Stanfield house, there are multiple scenes of Harrison Ford feverishly typing on a computer straight out the 1980s. I firmly believe that it's possible to make a computer-based techno-thriller enjoyable, but Firewall fumbles any chances it gets. All we get is Ford mumbling to himself, typing randomly on a keyboard (why do computers in film not have a mouse?), and shots of equally random characters on a computer screen - expertly crafted to keep the viewer from actually knowing what is happening or caring about it.

Throughout most of the film, Ford seems to be playing the part of an old, tired man. He tries to trick his captors at one point in a scene that requires a little bit too much suspension of disbelief (the person watching Jack through a pen-camera just happened to look down at the right moment), but other than that he does a lot of wheezing and gasping for air. There's one scene where Jack has to jump off of like a four foot ledge and he crashes down onto the ground, unable to handle the short drop. In another scene, Jack is surprised and - no joke - falls backward, arms spinning in windmills.

And yet, when the techno-wizardry of the first two thirds of the movie is discarded in favor of over-the-top action sequences in the final act, suddenly Jack is a veritable.. um.. oh geez, what's another action hero I can compare him to?.. well, uh.. he's like that guy from Indiana Jones. Yeah, he's exactly like that guy. Sean Connery! That's the guy I was thinking of.

But anyway. Blah, blah, blah, no surprises, no surprises. It's hard even to say that it's a mindless thriller that you shouldn't take too seriously, because it's not thrilling in the least. Whatever goals that Firewall was trying to accomplish, it did not.

Alright, let me end this with a flourish:

Firewall? More like Fire-dull!