Firewall
John Sheridan, Blockbuster.co.uk
The glaring legend has returned in this high tech thriller.
Harrison Ford, the man with the constant glare stars as Jack Stanfield, a bank security Vice President whose family is held hostage by a slick, ruthless thief (
Paul Bettany). It’s enjoyable enough stuff and Ford is such a legend that this makes it all the more watchable.
Like other techie thrillers, Firewall relies heavily on computers, cell phones and email to the point where you wonder how action thrillers were ever produced without them. And everything works so well – I mean, Ford gets reception on his mobile everywhere and as for his PC, it didn’t crash once… and burned a CD in like 5 seconds… impressive. But then again, no self-respecting machine is going to risk annoying the great Harrison Ford.
Paul Bettany is great as evil criminal Bill Cox, who, with along with his techie henchmen, hold our hero’s family captive and do horrible things to them and our hero. Unfortunately for him, Jack Stanfield is not as dumb or weak as his worried look might suggest and Harrison Ford goes all ‘Air Force One’ on the group as he desperately tries to protect his architect wife (
Virginia Madsen) and cute kids from the clutches of Cox’s ruthless posse at the same time as trying to pull off the electronic money transfer of the century.
Director
Richard Loncraine keeps the tension ratcheted up as Stanfield must cover his tracks from his team and his bosses including his super secretary – the brilliant
Mary Lynn Rajskub (aka. Chloe from 24), suspicious fellow VP Gary (
Robert Patrick – the T1000 himself) and bank President
Alan Arkin (Return of Captain Invincible). The whole thing is complicated further by the fact that due to a bank merger, Stanfield can not access the information Cox wants and Stanfield has to then borrow his daughter’s pink IPod to help him hack his way in to the bank’s mainframe and acquire the funds. OK. Whatever.
This is a fast paced and absorbing thriller, and a great Harrison Ford film that will keep you gripped until the very end. Sure it has a couple of things that you will have to excuse – the IPod moment being one and the fact that Ford’s wife in this is at least 20 years younger than our hero but Ford’s great and in this, he does what he does best when backed into a corner – he kicks ass. Add to your list now!