Movie Review: Firewall

Firewall

Big movie openings in recent weeks have been few and far between. With time and weather also conspiring against a drive to a larger venue with more choices, I settled for DVDs last weekend. This weekend, Firewall opened and I was delighted to head back to the theatre on Friday night. I should have stayed with DVDs again.

Those with computer savvy know that a firewall is intended to prevent unauthorized access into computer systems. Jack Stanfield (Harrison Ford) knows plenty about firewalls. He's a vice president in charge of security for a bank in Seattle, Washington. But his biggest worry as the movie opens isn't security per se; it's the pending merger of his bank with a much larger conglomerate. Jack isn't so sure the merger is a good idea. His boss and good friend Arlen (Alan Arkin) lets Jack know how important the merger is. But Jack's not convinced, and the fact he doesn't like the man in charge of ensuring the merger goes smoothly (Robert Patrick) doesn't help.

Jack's current disillusionment with his job is one reason he's willing to have a drink after work with his friend and co-worker (Robert Forster) and a man with a business proposition for the two of them. Jack, who is in a hurry to get home for his family's weekly pizza night, assures both men he'll think about joining them in a business venture. But when he gets in his car for the drive home, the man he's just met jumps into the back seat of his car and informs him his family is being held hostage to coerce Jack's cooperation with a major heist.

Once back at his house, Jack finds his architect wife, Beth (Virginia Madsen), his teenaged daughter, Sarah (Carly Schroeder), and his eight year-old son Andrew (Jimmy Bennett) bound and gagged on the sofa. Only then does Jack learn that the man he met earlier in the evening is the gang's leader (Bill Cox, played by Paul Bettany), and that he's has been watching him, waiting for his chance to pull off his intricately planned caper.

With the threat to his family to ensure his good behavior, Jack reluctantly agrees to do as he's told. Even so, he has moments of rebellion as he enlists the unknowing help of his secretary, Janet (Mary Lynn Rajskub) or a young man working in the bank's wire transfer department. Jack's odd behavior and his even gruffer than usual demeanor doesn't sit well with co-workers, not least of whom is his old nemesis, the man facilitating the merger. But that pales in comparison to the fact that Jack's criminal handlers know he's not been fully cooperative, and there will be repercussions.

A good friend of mine noted that Firewall looked to her just like most Harrison Ford movies look. She's right. But I happen to like Harrison Ford movies, so that was okay with me. True to type, Ford's character in Firewall is gruff but slow to anger; loyal as can be, but an unrelenting force of nature when he's crossed. The problem is that, at 62, Ford is just too old and stiff to play such a man convincingly (to his credit, Ford did his own stunts, but even with some decent editing of a fight scene, some set-ups were clearly visible). Virginia Madsen, who was so brilliant in Sideways, takes a giant step down with her role here. Though she's given little to work with, she does little with it, either. The actors playing the children at least hold up their end of the deal!

Paul Bettany offers what is probably the best performance of the film. He's soft-spoken and friendly, yet at the same time utterly unfeeling and chilling which those of us who know what he is can see — even behind the convincing facade he hides behind. When he loses control for brief moments, it's possible to watch him actually rein his anger in. Another of the gang of bad guys, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (who plays the man apparently second in command of the group), is also good. The rest of the major cast members, most notably Robert Patrick and Mary Lynn Rajskub, are just fine.

The production values are good, but with one glaring exception: for some bizarre reason, money was spent on locations and sets that are perfectly serviceable, but blue screen techniques were used — badly — in the windows of a couple of the moving car scenes. In a movie with this kind of budget, that's not only unacceptable, it's inexcusable. Worst is the script, which is truly awful. The technobabble is both transparent and insufficient; the lines spoken by characters would have been nothing short of stilted had they been uttered by less capable actors. And the plot itself was entirely predictable, from beginning to end (even when the writer apparently ran out of logic and opted for the deus ex machina of a high tech doggie collar to get him out of a corner he'd backed himself into).

Before Firewall began, there was the usual set of coming attractions. Among the trailers was one for the upcoming The Inside Man (starring Clive Owen, Denzel Washington, and Jodie Foster). It's about — you guessed it — an intricately planned bank robbery. I have high hopes for The Inside Man. The 60 second trailer was better than all of the movie that followed. (Actually, the opening credits of Firewall are impressive. If the rest of the film had lived up to those wonderfully rendered few minutes, it would have been a pretty good show.)

FAMILY SUITABILITY: Firewall is rated PG-13 for "some intense sequences of violence." Though there's nothing graphic, there is one scene in particular involving a young boy that might prove particularly upsetting for younger kids. In general terms, I'd say the PG-13 rating has got it just about right. Most 13 year-old kids, though, are going to be bored to distraction with a movie that even they'll be able to predict with little effort, and they won't even have the memory of Harrison Ford as the uber-heroic Han Solo to fall back on when all else fails. I can't in good conscience recommend Firewall for audiences of any age.