Firewall Review

by samseescinema (sammeriam AT comcast DOT net)
February 14th, 2006

Firewall
reviewed by Sam Osborn of www.samseescinema.com

rating: 2.5 out of 4

Director: Richard Loncraine
Cast: Harrison Ford, Paul Bettany, Virginia Madsen, Robert Patrick Screenplay: Joe Forte
MPAA Classification: PG-13 (some intense sequences of violence)
Firewall is the same bank robbery film we've been seeing for years. Only, this time, the formula has been outfitted for the Information Age. The bank robbers hardly even require guns anymore. A computer does the job quite nicely. Director Richard Loncraine works the formula as best he can, and for the most part, covers its usual blunders. And using only the finest of ingredients for his well-worn recipe, bringing in the likes of Harrison Ford, Paul Bettany, and Virginia Madsen, Firewall is certainly doing its best. But for all its bells and whistles, Firewall is still strapped tightly down by its narrative, doomed to be the genre film from last year and the year before, and the year before that one, and so on and so forth.

Jack Stanfield (Harrison Ford) is a happy husband and father of two children, living in a top-tier home of his wife's architectural creation. His job is important: designing the security systems of a top Seattle bank. But also, his job offers Bill Cox (Paul Bettany) the slyest of opportunities to become rich. Cox's plan is simple: to steal $10,000 from 10,000 of the bank's wealthiest clients by using Jack's technological gateways granted by his job. Of course, in order to get Jack--an employee of the bank for over twenty years-to pull such a heist, Cox needs a little collateral. Well suited for the job is Jack's family. But as most protagonists in similar situations react, Jack doesn't take kindly to having his family kidnapped and launches a wild rebellion, finding ways to cripple Cox and his team using antics of the highest technological degree.

Harrison Ford and Paul Bettany are both exceptional actors placed here in unexceptional roles. But the two work their parts with ease, and even add their own variables to the equation, making efforts to birth originality from their otherwise stock performances. The outcome is superb for both men, resulting in characters that are indescribably human, who react in fashions that hint at uncanny depth to characters originally drawn lightly by the screenplay. Virginia Madsen, on the other hand, plays Jack's strong and worried wife, and does fine, but seems underused and sadly obligatory. She fails to extract spice from her character's limited resources.

The real star player for Firewall, however, is its ingenuity. Joe Forte's script incorporates crafty techie solutions to cover up his narrative's formulaic mishaps. Every element of the genre's usual heist, chase, and solution are all upgraded from the now-prehistoric bank robbing days of ten years ago, into the high tech criminal wizardry of 2006. GPS dog collars, iPod contraptions, scanner heads, and cell phone cloning are all swiftly added to Firewall's equation, bringing refreshing wafts of originality to the final result.
But for all the ingenious quirks and resourcefulness, the ingenuity fails to leap Firewall's mounting hurdles of clunky cliché. Because at its heart, Firewall is just another film about a bank robbery, and an admittedly tame one at that. For as many tricks it hides up its sleeve, the film can't manage to yank itself away from the boorish tug of its genre.

-www.samseescinema.com

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