FIREWALL

The set up: Jack Stanfield (Harrison Ford) has the perfect family - two kids, a wife (Virginia Madsen) who loves him and a great career as a security chief at the Seattle bank where he designed the firewall that protects the bank’s accounts from hackers. His son is allergic to nuts, his wife is an architect, his daughter is bright and their dog is frisky. As a computer expert,  their are gadgets around the house in need of tweaking.  Two of them and his family’s individual traits all play an integral part in the action from beginning to end.

The plot: Bill Cox (Paul Brittany) and his band of not so merry men - a computer geek and a few grubby gunmen - hold Stanfield’s family hostage forcing him to help them steal millions. The only problem is, the bank is in the middle of a merger and the control procedures for the bank’s central electronic nervous system have just been altered. The robbers are a week late. But Jack has a reputation for being creative. First he uses his imaginary juices to try and help his wife and kids escape. When all attempts to rescue  them fail, Jack gives in. Ultimately he uses an Ipod (I kid you not!) to get to the money,  but Jack still has to get his family back. He’s after them, the new corporate front man (Robert Patrick) sics the cops on Jack, and people begin to die.  

There are one or two red herrings thrown into the “Firewall” stew with Robert Forster as the boss who may or may not be in on the take; a few scenes stand out with Stanfield forced to fire his secretary for her own good and his using his security card to enter a bank branch at an airport while the bank manager presses the silent alarm, but once the prop and plot devises that were planted from scene to scene are exhausted, the bottom falls out from under “Firewall.”

Richard Loncraine spends about ninety percent of the movie letting Ford’s character use his brains instead of his brawn to battle the bad guys. Cox is a killer. So why the mano a mano that suddenly turns Stanfield into a man of action? Loncraine violates every precept he sets up for Jack’s character.  The ending is so far out of left field - except for the part Jack’s dog plays - it sideswipes the movie and destroys any vestige of credibility the movie may have had.

                                                                                                                      Copyright 2006

Director Richard Loncraine made a terrific movie back in the late 80s with a bank’s security system and a hostage situation at the core of the plot.  

“Bellman and True” (1987) - Bernard Hill (the doomed captain in “Titanic”) loses his job at a bank and sells the security codes to would be bank robbers who turn out to be more dangerous than he thought. He’s forced to take part in the robbery when his son is taken hostage.