Firewall
2006
* * ½
The security manager at a bank (Harrison Ford), his wife (Virginia Madsen), and their two kids are taken hostage by a bank robber (Paul Bettany) who wants to ---
Quick, multiple choice question:
a) take them out to dinner;
b) sit down with them and watch season six of The Simpsons on DVD;
c) rob the bank Ford works at; or
d) order a pizza.
Actually, the answer is both (b) and (d). The entire movie is that high-profile cast sitting down and watching a bunch of Simspons episodes while ordering a pizza and eating it. I don’t know what the heck the title was all about.
Actually, if you guessed anything other than (c), you should be ashamed of yourself.
Next multiple choice question: once this gets going, Harrison Ford acts like: a) Woody Allen, nervously quiping his way through the next two hours of lunacy; b) Bruce Willis, confidantly quipping his way through a series of gunfights and explosions while constantly getting bloodier and closer to death; or c) Harrison Ford, finding fairly intelligent ways to get back at them before absolutely kicking every one of the bank robbers’ butts with the demeanor of a man you would follow anywhere and you honestly wish was the president of the United States and would single-handedly kill all the terrorists.
Unfortunately, this isn’t as good as the movie where he actually was the president and single-handedly killed all the terrorists.
This thriller has no suspense nor is it memorable in any way whatsoever. I just watched it and I barely remember it already. However, it’s slick, fast paced, clever, well acted, well made, and fairly entertaining. Ford is just so good at what he does that you never even notice that he’s 63 years old. Except for the white hair, he looks almost as good doing it today as he did ten or twenty years ago. Madsen is, as always, excellent in (as always) an underwritten role. And Bettany is a darn good villain. While you never feel any suspense, you do get entertainment and excitement, so if you’re interested, it delivers on those levels at least. It just doesn’t do any more than that, and doesn’t do that any better than it absolutely has to.
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