In FIREWALL, director Richard Loncraine (WIMBLEDON), working from Joe Forte's tightly written script, crafts an old fashioned thriller from some high tech trappings. In the process he produces a highly enjoyable and fast-paced picture that is simply a lot of fun. Sure, many critics will write it off as just an expensive B movie, but, if you like leaving a theater feeling like you've really gotten your money's worth of entertainment, FIREWALL provides an exhilarating ride that will leave you completely satisfied.
In the first of many good casting choices, Harrison Ford plays Jack Stanfield, the head of network security at a medium-sized bank in Seattle. The city appears to be right in the middle of monsoon season, which makes for some great atmospherics. Even better is the heavy scoring by Alexandre Desplat, which lends some dramatic musical punctuation to most scenes. You may remember him from his dreamy and mysterious music for BIRTH, starring Nicole Kidman.
Jack may be an exec, but early-on he demonstrates a few technical tricks to the computer whiz kids who work for him. His wife, played nicely by Virginia Madsen, is a busy architect and housewife. Their two children, played well enough in underwritten roles by Jimmy Bennett and Carly Schroeder, are there mainly so that they can be used against Jack by the criminals who come to take over Jack's family and his life and start ordering him to do exactly as they order.
Making an excellent villain, Paul Bettany plays Bill Cox, a self-described "nice guy" who will not hurt Jack's family if Jack helps him rob the bank, all electronically, of course. Much time is spent on the scheme, which is both intricate and plausible. Along the way, Jack learns firsthand that Bill can be extremely ruthless and deadly if crossed.
Sometimes it is in the supporting cast in which a film's secret sauce is discovered, and so it is in FIREWALL. The television series "24" is well known for its star Kiefer Sutherland, but it is in the supporting cast, most especially that of its number one geek, the lovably awkward and socially-deficient Chloe, where the show is made to shine. Mary Lynn Rajskub, who gives Chloe her condescending yet endearing smile, plays Janet, Jack's loyal motormouth of a secretary. The movie is smart enough to use Rajskub's sarcastic skills so that she steals all of her scenes without appearing to be trying to do so.
As the clock counts down on the heist and as it becomes clear that Bill may or may not ever release Jack's family, Jack begins to take things into his own hands. His actions appear both plausible and difficult. He is a man in his sixties, who, although he may be no spring chicken, finds his adrenaline pumping when it is his family's survival that is at stake. You'll be rooting for the Stanfield family, and you'll be fascinated by the robber's plan and the way in which Jack tries to thwart it.
The movie's Hollywood ending, especially the last scene, is pure hokum, but who cares. What you want is for Jack to be victorious and his family to be saved. You bought the tickets. You want to get what you paid for.
FIREWALL runs a fast 1:45. It is rated PG-13 for "some intense sequences of violence" and would be acceptable for kids around 11 and up.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, February 10, 2006. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
By : Steve Rhodes (http://www.internetreviews.com/)
Source: rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
Rating: 3
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.
