"Firewall" Movie Review
Saturday, May 06, 2006
The Story
Ford stars as Jack Stanfield, a bank security specialist whos married to an architect (Virginia Madsen), has two good-looking kids, a loyal dog (yes, thats important), and a beautiful home. Lifes a bowl of cherries until one day Bill Cox (Paul Bettany) appears on the scene.
Introduced by Jacks friend Harry (Robert Forster) as a potential employer, Bill is plugged into the picture as someone interested in hiring the two away from the bank. Jacks company is about to be swallowed up by a larger corporation and their head honcho of security (Robert Patrick) doesnt care for Jack, so its logical he would consider switching employers.
Of course everything isnt as it seems. Cox is actually the leader of a gang of criminals who invade Jacks home, take his family hostage, and force the security specialist to hack into his own system. Bill has figured out that its no longer about the money physically housed inside of a banks vault.
The big score is stealing millions from the biggest account holders via a computer program. Bills form of bank robbing doesnt involve safecracking but instead computer hacking skills, and Jacks the only man on the planet who is evidently able to get inside the security system he created.
With his family held captive by heavily armed men, Jacks sent off to work and told to act as though nothings happened. No one at work appears to notice Jacks wearing the same clothes from the day before, but what the heck.
Maybe he does that once a week so well give that little error a pass. But the story really deteriorates when Jacks walking around muttering to himself, carrying on conversations with windows, and hugging his female assistant inappropriately and no antennas go up or alarm bells are set off.
Jacks the banks chief security officer and hes obviously up to something but no one catches on? Thats highly unlikely.
There are the obligatory fight scenes, some sequences in which Ford is forced to scream very loudly at the villains, and the insertion of a few characters who may or may not be bad guys. Ho hum. We really have seen all this before, havent we?
posted by Evil @ 7:55 AM,
