Firewall - at last, a good techno-thriller

I’d been waiting for Firewall to come out or some time, partly because ~I haven’t seen Harrison Ford in anything for ages, partly because Paul Bettany is one of the best actors around at the moment, and partly to see if someone could finally produce a credible techno-thriller. (Following fiascos such as AntiTrust and Swordfish I was beginning to lose hope for the genre!)

In Firewall, Harrison Ford plays Jack Stansfield, head of IT Security at a small bank that’s in merger talks with a much larger bank. The larger bank view fraud losses as an unfortunate but inevitable risk, a position which Stansfield finds unacceptable. Together with his security counterpart Harry (Robert Forster), he has a meeting with someone who may be able to help them keep doing things their way…

Meanwhile, Jack’s family is taken hostage and he finds himself embroiled in a plot to beat his own security system – a system he has designed to be unbeatable…

The film opens with the credits intermingled with security camera footage of Jack and his family, and those watching him going through his rubbish and reassembling information that they will go on to use against him. It’s one of the most effective intros I’ve seen for years. You can also hear the conspirators talking about what they can see and how they’re going to get certain information. So not only is Jack’s family held hostage, but his whole pattern of life, his habits, and all his contacts, are well known to those forcing him to their bidding.

As the plot unfolds, the hostage-takers seems to be ahead of Jack’s every move, no matter how clever or sneaky he is. With no-one he can turn to, it’s up to him alone to save his family.

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One of the main problems with most techno-thrillers in the past decade has been believability – with most of them, the whole thing comes tumbling down as they stretch your suspension of belief beyond breaking point and fill their plots with coincident-ridden events. Firewall manages largely to avoid this pitfall, though there are times when plot cohesion is a little shaky. For the most part though this film is cleverly and fairly tightly plotted, and keeps up a level of tension that stops you thinking too much about any potential plot holes. The action sequences are extremely well shot (though a little violent for it’s 12A / PG-13 rating) and the characters are ones that you can care about or loathe as appropriate. There is a terrific musical score (courtesy of Alexandre Desplat) to add to the feeling of suspense and none of the cast disappoint. Ford is great though he is beginning to look a little too old for this sort of movie role, and his family do look rather too young for him (not impossibly young but it does hurt the realism factor a little), while Bettany continues to show why he is one of Hollywood’s hottest properties with a quietly unnerving role. Unfortunately his character doesn’t seem very consistent at times, which is one of the factors that stops this being a 5 star film (along with a couple of continuity problems). The technological aspect is cleverly kept as a key part of the film throughout, without it ever becoming obtrusive.


Overall Firewall is a very good techno-thriller, in fact a very good thriller of any kind, but it just misses out on being a great one. It’s nice to see Harrison Ford back on the silver screen after what seems like a long wait – at least it’s a while since I’ve seen him in the cinema (the last time was actually Raiders of the Lost Ark, but that wasn’t at the time of release!!). In fact the last film I watched him in at the cinema, in terms of when it was made, was Clear and Present Danger in 1994 (doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun eh??!) You won’t be disappointed with Firewall, though parents should be aware that younger children may find the violence a bit too much.

Other Information

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for some intense sequences of violence, and for some language (12A in the UK)
Runtime: 105 min

Continuity problems - see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408345/goofs - yes, some of them were noticeable during the film itself… if you haven’t seen the film already this may contain a couple of spoilers.

Related Links

Harrison Ford

Raiders of the Lost Ark

He also starred in many of my favourite Action / Adventure Movies

Paul Bettany

A Beautiful Mind
Master and Commander
A Knight’s Tale
Wimbledon


Another Techno-Thriller:

The Net starring Sandra Bullock