Firewall (2006)

Firefly

Mark Twain once said that the difference between the right word and the word that's almost right is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Firewall, starring Harrison Ford, and the still exquisite Virginia Madsen, is a firefly. It has all the elements of a taut thriller, highly pressurized situations, loathsome baddy, sympathetic good guys, excellent production value, acting, and cinematography. The only thing missing is the thrill.

This is such familiar country for Harrison Ford that one wonders if he even needs to look at the scripts anymore. He's in a jam, his family is in danger, and he must single-handedly battle insane odds and triumph. Most familiar of all is his pained look, reflecting deep interior anguish. We are so accustomed to seeing Harrison Ford looking haunted, stoically suffering in silence, that we must wonder if he gets a royalty every time somebody else looks like this. His acting is fine, indeed the acting is fine throughout, but there's nothing unfamiliar or unexpected happening.

Alan Arkin and Robert Forster - both excellent actors - aren't on-screen long enough to help the cause. The plot offers no "aha" twists, which are a staple of films like this. Worst of all, the evil mastermind - always the fulcrum of a thriller - played by Paul Bettany, gets less interesting and convincing as the film advances. He begins well, a dispassionate, cerebral Brit that has done his homework very carefully. But instead of controlled, implied violence - far more powerful in a thriller - he vents his anger impulsively, ironically at his own henchmen. (Poor leadership skills.) In the plus column, how he meets his well-deserved fate is totally satisfying.

"High-tech" computer world drama is hard to present on screen; that said, the film fails on this level as well. It is actually quite low-tech. The movie "Inside Man," starring Clive Owen, is flawed, but at least it's a bank robbery movie fueled by a very interesting, unexpected idea. The same could not be said of Firewall. June 23, 2008

RICHARD LONCRAINE, OPUS 8

*** 2006. Directed by the British director Richard Loncraine. The family of the head security officer of a Seattle bank is kidnapped by a gang of bank thieves. Average thriller for a rainy sunday night - it seems to rain a lot in Seattle - FIREWALL is just popcorn movie, quickly seen, quickly forgotten. Well, yes, as Mary Lynn Rajskub plays the secretary of Harrison Ford, every time she calls him Jack, I was teleported into a 24 - Seasons 1 - 6 episode. Can we call that originality ? Already forgotten. June 3, 2008

Intense, entertaining, but not very plausible

Firewall is an exciting, entertaining film if you just let yourself go and
immerse yourself into its plot without having to convince youself that its
believable, that anything is possible even though there is a one in 500 billion probability that something like this could happen. This is an identity theft genre film taken to the extreme. There are other films that deal with identity theft that are more believable, for instance The Net, starring Sandra Bullock. I'm naturally cynical, I suppose, but I kept asking myself, how could the bad guy in this film expect that he could possibly get away with this. This plot could have been more believable that if a terrorist group plotted to carry something out like this to fund their other terrorist operations rather than some greedy, murderous fiend who wanted to live a life of luxury on a South Sea Island. Other than that, there were enough elements that kept me interested enough to see it through to the end. However, I doubt that I would ever want to watch it again. Dan Casey May 27, 2008

Stinker.

Even Harrison Ford couldn't save this stinker of a movie.

The wife and children of Jack Stanfield (Ford), VP of bank security, are kidnapped and held as ransom. They will be killed unless Jack cracks his own bank's security system and hands the kidnappers millions of dollars. (Yawn.)

Harrison hams it up, gives us plenty of his jaw-clenching grimaces and hard looks, but he can't pull this over-used plot out of the mud.

Sigorney Weaver's alien has more character depth than the villain played by Paul Bettany. His evil facial expression becomes tiresome and laughable within ten minutes of his entrance.

Odd that Jack (Harrison) had no security measures for himself or his family, yet his dog had a global tracker in his collar. How convenient when Jack needed to track down his kidnapped family and save the day. Oh, please, spare me the white-knuckle tension of this "exciting thriller".

There was nothing new in this flick. Everything is a cut-and-paste, carbon copy of other movies. Dull. Boring. Even the ending was predictable. March 24, 2008

Too Good To Miss

Firewall was great and of course, Harrison Ford never lets you down with a great performance. This is my second purchase of the same movie due to the fact I lent it to so many people and someone obviously never retuned it back to me. Buy it and keep it!!! March 11, 2008

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