Firewall Review
by [email protected] (dnb AT dca DOT net)February 18th, 2006
FIREWALL
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2006 David N. Butterworth
** (out of ****)
Remember Harrison Ford, as President James Marshall, growling "get the hell off my plane!" to pesky Russian hijackers in that airborne turkey "Air Force One"? Well he's back, this time growling "get your filthy hands off my family" to "Master and Commander"'s Paul Bettany in "Firewall," an unexceptional and very by-the-books domestic-hostage- ransom-drama-crisis-conflict-family-blackmail-standoff thing from director Richard Loncraine (better known for his quirky Brit-coms and dark dramas than explosive action pictures like this one).
In the film the former president Ford plays Jack Stanfield (has he ever played a character NOT called Jack?), a computer security specialist who's forced to rob the Seattle-based Longrock Bank he's spent the better part of 20 years protecting by bad guys headed up by Bettany's Bill Cox. Cox and his cohorts, who have had Jack in their sights for some time now, crash into Jack's palatial Pacific Northwest mansion and hold his wife and two kids hostage.
(In a throwaway plot detail the impressive cliff top house was designed by Virginia Madsen's architect Mom; she gets to growl "don't you ever touch my children again!" but her bigger moment comes when one of the stiffs tosses the family pooch out of a moving car.)
"Firewall" is one of those movies in which millions of dollars transfers electronically out of bank accounts into some offshore, Caiman Islands account and then later, when the tables are turned, spirals back out again before our aghast villain's eyes. Speaking of eyes "Firewall" is also one of those movies in which the villain utters the immortal line "she has beautiful eyes, your daughter."
Cars careen through parking garage barriers, villains are shot, fire extinguished, or Oster-ized, and one of the kidnapped children has some medical condition that will be ruthlessly exploited. I'd like to say there are a couple of unique, unexpected moments in Joe Forte's screenplay but there aren't. It's cookie-cutter stuff through and through. Not incompetent cookie-cutter stuff by any means but stock, stock, stock all the way--nobody does anything particular clever or interesting or inspiring.
Bettany, nevertheless, makes for a suave, convincing killer but Ford is getting awfully long in the tooth, huffing and puffing his way through a script that requires him to play tough but not think too hard. Madsen is pretty much wasted as is Alan Arkin and Robert Forster, who phone in performances as disinterested bank executives. The kids, too, have very little to do and the only ray of light in this otherwise pedestrian thriller is Mary Lynn Rajskub, who plays Jack's beleaguered secretary. She's got a Renée Zellweger charm about her and lends the film a certain warmth and humanity whenever she's on screen.
"Why do you hate us so much?" Jack's teenage daughter grills one of her kidnappers during a rare moment of pluck. "I don't hate you," the Uzi-toting heavy replies. "I just don't care about you."
That pretty much sums up my feelings about "Firewall."
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David N. Butterworth
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