By J.E.
I’m always up for watching a movie from the action/thriller genre and I usually enjoy Harrison Ford’s films, so renting Firewall over the weekend seemed like a no-brainer. I figured I’d be at least mildly entertained even if I did get a standard, recycled plot. Too bad I was only half right.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Ford stars as Jack Stanfield, the head of security technology for a small banking chain in Washington state. One day at work, his friend and colleague Harry (played by Robert Forster) says that he has set up a business meeting with a banker named Bill Cox (Paul Bettany). Cox has a proposition for them, and Harry thinks Jack will be interested in it.
At the meeting Cox tells Jack and Harry that he needs a new security team at his bank and thinks these two would be perfect for the job. Although the salary and benefits sound great, Jack says he needs a few days to consider the offer. He then leaves the bar so he can get home to his family for pizza night.
But Cox unexpectedly follows Jack out to his car, slides into the backseat, pulls a gun, and tells Jack to drive home. Once they arrive, Jack sees that his wife Beth (Virginia Madsen) and his two children Sarah (Carly Schroeder) and Andy (Jimmy Bennett) have been taken hostage. Cox and his team want to transfer $10,000 from the bank’s 10,000 largest accounts (for a total of $100,000,000) — and they need Jack’s help to do it.
From there, the film shows how Jack schemes to defeat his own security system at the bank in order to get Cox the money and save his family. Of course along the way we have: unexpected roadblocks that make it harder for Jack to steal the money for Cox; failed attempts to let co-workers know what’s going on; failed escape attempts on the part of the family; and a final showdown between Jack and Cox.
My Reaction: I know that it’s an exercise in futility to try to hold movies such as Firewall up to any kind of logical standard, so even though I didn’t like the movie, it wasn’t because I thought of a hundred ways Jack could have gotten help or any major problems like that. Instead, it was the cumulative effect of a a bunch of annoying little details that bogged this whole film down for me.
For instance, one reason the movie didn’t work for me was that I sympathized with the bank robbers more than with Jack’s family. I thought the wife and kids were extremely irritating, and wouldn’t have minded seeing them get hurt (or worse). Seriously. I was just hoping that Cox would get his money and get the hell out of there so we wouldn’t have to deal with that family anymore.
Second, I couldn’t figure out why Cox didn’t kill one or more of the family members once Jack started being uncooperative. I mean, he didn’t hesitate to kill one of his own guys for screwing up, but wouldn’t touch Jack’s family?? Not even a black eye or a busted kneecap? Come on. If Cox was such a badass, Stanfield blood would have been spilling from beginning to end.
Third, what was the point of the Gary character played by Robert Patrick? They set Gary up as a foil to Jack, but nothing ever came of it. Gary didn’t get in the way, nor did he make things more difficult for Jack. He didn’t even pull a surprise move and end up helping Jack out in the end. There was simply NO POINT to his character being in the film at all.
And don’t even get me started on the dog. Or the fact that Harrison Ford is over 60 years old but has a family you’d expect a 40-year-old to have.
Overall, I thought there were far too many of these minor problems throughout the script, and they simply couldn’t be ignored. For this reason, I give Firewall 4.5 stars and suggest that you skip it if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s just not worth the time.
