Firewall

Because I also have a background in internet security, I was expecting this film to be a “high-tech” flambé of technological ineptitude. I was wrong. It’s not very high-tech at all. Actually, it starts out like it wants to be a technological thriller of of clandestine intrepdity, and ends up being another dull rich-guy-goes-and-messes-with-bad-guys-to-get-his-family-back movie. I’m straining to remember the last time I saw a film about a blue collar worker at a steel mill who uses his extremely limited resources to go rescue his family from people even further down the tax bracket. I figure with kidnappers that destitute, all kinds of crazy shit’s got to go down.

“Firewall” begins with one of those layered title sequences that makes you think the editors just broke open the latest title software and had to play with all the dials. The title sequence has clips of amateur video. We immediately recognize that it’s surveillance, accompanied by (just in case you forgot how high-tech this movie is) the clicking of computer keys and the shutter of a camera. Why are they taking still photos when they obviously have video?

Note to studio execs and theater managers: If audiences are this antsy to get into the plot that they can’t wait through the titles, it might have something to do with the twenty minutes of commercials and trailers you just ran. Frankly, I’m surprised people don’t just walk out… After all, you just saw the all the best parts of twelve movies. Why sit through all the worst parts of this one?

Well, the plot is quite simple. Jack Stanfield (Harrison Ford) is a security chief at a large bank. One day when he shows up to work, he’s greeted by a collector who’s come to recover $95,000 in gambling debts. Since Harrison Ford hasn’t played a less-than-honest (read: “believable”) hero since Indiana Jones, you can bet money the debts aren’t really his.

He has a typical movie secretary, Janet Stone (Mary Lynn Rajskub), who keeps her head down when she’s around him, is innocent and unassertive to anyone, including her co-worker Bobby (Matthew Currie Holmes). Jack has typical movie kids: The angsty older daughter and the younger geek son with — straight from “Panic Room” — a physical ailment that requires medical attention.

Frank has a meeting with his co-worker Harry Romano (Robert Forster) and Bill Cox (Paul Bettany), who’s interested in making a business deal with the bank. For the handful of you who haven’t seen it coming, this is your chance to avoid some spoilers and come back to this review after you’ve seen the film. It’s quite obvious, otherwise, that Cox, is the engineer of the kidnapping and robbery.

The henchmen are cookie-cutter stereotypes. There’s our clean-cut Cox who, judging from his fascination with cooking, appreciates the finer things in life, including ill-gotten wealth. He should have been a CEO. Apparently they’re much harder to prosecute. Then there’s Liam, the token IRA reject-turned-mercenary. And of course there are the lesser henchmen, each of whom is imbued with sufficient enough doubt in their invaluability that they’re ripe targets for psychological subversion by their captors.

On the one hand, when his henchmen arrive at the Stanfield residence to take Jack’s wife Beth (Virginia Madsen) and their son and daughter hostage, they seem clever. They know enough to remove all the kitchen utensils from the house, and to stock the fridge with food so no one has to leave. Jack, on the other hand, seems kind of dumb for a network security guy. For one, the password to their multimillion-dollar house’s security sysem is “lark.”

Cox’s plan is to have Jack break into the bank’s network from the inside to give them access to the largest accounts so they can wire transfer out a nice, rounded sum from each account — totalling $100 million in all. If they’re clever enough to set up a false business deal, a bogus gambling debt to make Jack look dirty, surveillance, wire transfers from multiple accounts in smaller amounts… don’t you think they’d have the sense to transfer an odd number of dollars and some cents from each account to make the transactions totally random and unrelated to one another? I sign off all kinds of odd-figured balances every week and if I saw any kind of unusual round-numbered transaction I’d be calling the bank… and I don’t have a particularly large bank account.

Jack’s boss, Gary Mitchell (Robert Patrick), barely has any role at all, except to look suspecting of Jack and provide a few moments of artificial tension while he comes darned close to stumbling upon Jack’s attempt to break into the bank’s servers.

Jack is wired with a microphone and small camera so the bad guys can see and hear everything. The camera is mounted on him, not looking at him. They can also read his email as he’s typing it. This begs two more questions: 1. If they have access inside the network, why do they need Jack? (Yes, they offer a reason, but it isn’t very solid.) 2. Why doesn’t Jack simply write a note for help on a piece of paper?

Companies that manage many billions less than this one does have business continuity and security plans that I’m pretty certain, at some point, have written in them, “If kidnapped, forced to do robbers bidding, and can’t talk or send e-mail, then mime, use hand gestures, shadow puppets or pen and paper.”

There are too many questions and not enough answers, and just then the movie crash lands into Harrison Ford action figure mode. There are lines throughout the film which Ford is made to utter (to the tune of his usual self-dignity-vaporizing salary) that act as preludes to a big action finish. “I wanna know what you want, and I wanna know now,” for example.

Janet mainly exists to act as the protagonist’s subordinate sidekick who is, much to her necessary bewilderment, unwittingly recruited to help Jack win the power-up and… I mean, get his family back… and to help set up the big action star line when she asks, “What are you doing?”

Jack, with that overtly gruff, grunty voice and scowling face of mock determination, delivers it…You know, the line that serves as the “cue applause” sign for the masses, “I’m gonna find my dog!” It’s not as silly as it looks on paper, since Jack actually has a reason to look for the dog that I won’t reveal because even hinting at it will give away one of the few Deus Ex Machinae… I mean, surprises in the film. What’s funny is the way Ford delivers it with such seriousness, and the fact that it resonates with the same cliché tone of every macho protagonist’s “hero phrase” ever uttered in a bland action movie.

We know the Stanfield’s make it out okay, because audiences don’t pay $9 to see Harrison Ford get whacked. Harrison Ford doesn’t get paid $20 million a picture to get whacked. The film ends, hilariously, with the family walking up the hill from the aftermath at the hideout shack… literally emerging from their ordeal, in case we couldn’t figure out that’s just what happened.

Earlier this week I actually heard another critic talk about, believe it or not, Harrison Ford’s style of “acting without acting.” I have a word for that. It’s called “laziness,” which, incidentally, perfectly describes everything that went into this movie.

Firewall • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Running Time: 105 minutes • MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some intense sequences of violence. • Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures