Kim Gentes

More human but techie Harrison Ford..

Since his breakout role as Han Solo in Star Wars, to his starring in the Indiana Jones series, Harrison Ford has always had a great ability to exemplify whatever character sketch the screenwriter was reaching for. Always witty, often with charming quirks, Ford always gave a reason to pause and chuckle, usually amidst tension, action and plot climax. Movies like Witness, Air Force One, Frantic and others brought us a serious, action driven Ford, who was bent on whiteknuckling his way to some of the most memorable moments in action film with a human twist.

This newest film, Firewall, takes an older Harrison Ford and updates him for our times. He is now Jack Stanfield, executive in charge of systems security for a bank in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest region. He isn't a policeman, detective or adventurer. He is a family man with a high powered desk job. But all this changes when his family is abducted and held in leui of his cooperation and use of his excellent computer skills with which he is forced to break into and steal from the bank he works for. With the plot set, you get to take the ride with Jack and his family, trying to overcome the obstacles to recapturing his family and freedom.

While the action is still quite rivetting, it is not based on heroic dexterity or strength, instead Ford has to restrain his physical abilities as an actor to properly represent a normal white collar worker, but with intense determination. This was evident to anyone familiar with Harrison Ford's career as an action star, but made clear in a comment in the Firewall production notes-- 'Regarding Ford's innate aptitude, the stunt coordinator admits, "his ability to fight actually surpasses what's likely for his character so we had to dial it down in deference to the fact that he's playing a banking executive with a desk job."

The film is solid, but not spectacular, and this seems to be the understated goal of the director and the technical crew who put together the movie. They held back to good background research on how a techno thief would go about breaking into a bank system, instead of the over-the-top tech "thrillers" that shoot into science fiction so quickly.

The story is good, the acting memorable and the direction is right on track. Very nicely filmed in Vancouver Canada, its easily a beautiful representation of its US neighbor city, Seattle.

Not the best Harrison Ford movie, but much more honest than so much of the trite themed films hitting the screen these days. Firewall is a good effort worth seeing, and will likely be a rental favorite long after the theatre run. The movie has some mildly disturbing language and breif intense scenes of violence, including a crisp, startling (but not gratuituous) ending. I wouldn't bring a child under 13 to this film, which goes pretty much right in line with the PG 13 rating.

The nice thing about the movie is that it is centralized around the family of the protagonist, who's intense love for his family forces him to take escalating risks to save them. It's a good movie, and worth the effort to see.