Firewall (2006)

A question has come up in recent weeks surrounding Harrison Ford’s latest film “Firewall” and action-suspense thrillers in general. Is Ford getting too old for this sort of movie? There was a time, not so long ago, where the name ‘Harrison Ford’ meant something for filmgoers. An icon thanks to Geoege Lucas, the actor has graced many films which would end up on any one movie buff’s ‘Top Ten’ whether it would be an Indiana Jones installment, ‘Blade Runner’, ‘Witness’ or even ‘The Fugitive’. This new film, however, will not, as his recent films, join those ranks. In fact, the film, while still well acted, is routine for not only Ford, but also Virgina Madsen as well. Well, routine is too nice a word; the film flashes a lot of cliches amongst hi-tech hardware as a group of hi-tech thieves hold a man’s family hostage so he can he aid them in stealing 100 million dollars and transferred into ‘offshore accounts’. They need Jack Stanfield because he was the designer of an impenetrable computer firewall for the bank, and now, a problem has come up because the bank is in a period of a business transition. All the recording devices and mini pen cameras that they lace Jack’s suit with won’t help. Time for Plan B- come up with a plan or we’ll—- kill one of our guys because you made him look incompetent. Ooh. Scary. Well, they say they will kill the family, but aside from feeding the sick son bad cookies, they really don’t do much.

If Harrison Ford wasn’t in this, the picture might have played better. But since he is the lead in the picture, perhaps his wife should have played by Ashley Judd. Ashley seems to enjoy the same lame women in jepordy pictures. But instead, we get the talented Virginia Madsen, whose previous picture was the outstanding indie pic Sideways. Virginia is now reduced to worried wife with see-through tape over her mouth. The only things her character does? An escape attempt by crawling, with the kids, a big enough wooden crawlspace for them to get to the garage. They do make it to the car, only to get freaked out by the dead body in the backseat. No further attempts at bravado, except to plead with the baby faced ‘sympethetic’ member of the thieves. And let’s take a good lok at this bunch. Aside from mastermind Cox (Bettany) , there’s the professional tough guy, the psycho, the dude With Sympathy and the Sacrificial Lamb, who as previously mentioned gets offed for making one error. Also suspect Bettany’s casting. You know what means, right? If you thought ‘Eurotrash villian?” give yourself a blue ribbon.

The film is tough to enjoy because of all the cliches, plot holes (a scene has the baddies monitoring company e-mail; if they already hacked into the system, do they really ned to kidnap Jack’s family?), and by the numbers storytelling, and while I’ll buy that Jack is a late bloomer when it came to having a family, I..just didn’t buy Ford in this kind of role anymore. I’m not saying his acting his bad, far from it. What I am saying is that the material is beneath him and the rest of the cast. At worst, the film is extremly miscast. Consider Jaclk’s faithful and loyal secretary, played by Mary Lynn Rajskub. Her character and her Christian guitarist buddy become pivotal minor characters in the film, and in of itself, there’s nothing wrong with that. Except the secretary is played by Mary Lynn Rajskub- who is best known for a hi-tech role on TV’s “24″. Brief appearances by Alan Arkin and Robert Forster are nice, but why those actors? They come, they go. Forster’s character especially. Robert Patrick slightly rises to the ocassion as a new head of bank security. His character should be around the corner, suspcious of Jack and his new British friend, but he isn’t. And the kids? Jimmy Bennett and Carly Schroeder are fine, even if thier character’s traits get tiresome.

The dog? The family dog is fine. Seriously, the bad guys are so annoyed by the barking- instead of offing a subordinate- knock off the dog and be done with it. Family is scared, the threat is better, demands become serious. But they don’t, because in regards to man’s best friend, the family pooch becomes the Man’s Best Plot Device as well.

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Directed by : Richard Loncraine
Starring: Harrison Ford, Virgina Madsen, Paul Bettany, Robert Patrick, and Mary Lynn Rajskub.

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