Firewall: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

(Originally published 2006)

Imagine the situation.

You're Jack Stanfield (Harrison Ford), a wealthy, Seattle-based network security chief for a national chain of banks who couldn't have it better.

Just look at his trimmings. Jack has a loving, accomplished wife in Beth (Virginia Madsen), two typical kids in Sarah (Carly Schroeder) and Andy (Jimmy Bennett), he owns the swanky seaside estate that was used in the movie, "Elektra" (not that Jack knows that), and he has a corner office that overlooks all of Seattle.

Pretty idyllic stuff. So, now imagine this: One day, as Jack, you're posed with a rather troubling conundrum when into your life comes Bill Cox (Paul Bettany), a crook with nice suits and a swell English accent who wants you to rob your own bank and deposit $100 million into offshore accounts.

If you do so, your life and the lives of your recently kidnapped family, whose shrieking facing are captured on a cell phone camera and shown to you, will be spared. If you refuse, first your family will be murdered (messy), and then you (messier).

So, what do you do? Do you say to hell with the law and pilfer the money to protect your family, hoping you eventually will be vindicated and that, above all, your family will be safe? Or do you repeatedly put your family in harm's way, risking their lives time and again because you'd rather protect the bank's money instead?

If you're thinking this is a no brainer, well, that's because for sane people, it is. In the real world that "Firewall" eschews, you likely would overcome the bank's new security system--or its firewall, as it were--and send Bill packing with his money.

Thing is, Jack doesn't do that. Jack continues to make decisions that literally almost costs his family their lives. What he does is incredible and indefensible. Watching the movie, which director Richard Loncraine based on a script by Joe Forte, you sit there thinking that either this guy is dumb-struck stupid, which isn't a stretch given how he behaves, or he has a death wish for himself and his family.

Whatever the case, the choices he makes foul the film, sinking the suspension of disbelieve required to enjoy it. No man who loves his family as much as we're told that Jack loves his family would behave this way. It's also no help to the movie that so much of it is driven by cliches and contrivances.

For instance, we learn early on that Jack's son, Andy, is allergic to peanuts. What do you suppose the chances are that our little Andy is going to be fed just enough to make his eyes roll back in his head while he codes on the floor? We learn that the family's dog, Rusty, has a dog collar that also serves as a GPS tracking device, presumably so the dog could be found should it get lost. What do you suppose the odds that that collar will prove critical toward the end?

About that ending--it's a huffer and a puffer, with poor Harrison Ford looking oddly pale as he's kicked, bludgeoned, slapped, scratched, punched and tossed out windows. Ford has been here before, but never in a movie that made him look so frail--and never, ever in a movie that actually allowed the sun to set so symbolically behind him in the climactic scene.

Grade: D