Film: Firewall

1/5



Jack Stanfield (Harrison Ford, 63) is VP of Security at a bank which is being merged with a larger bank. Beth Stanfield (Virginia Madsen, 42) works at home as an architect in the family's secluded but beautiful home. A slick bad guy (Bill Cox, played by Paul Bettany, 34) blackmails him into a scheme to wire transfers $100 million to an offshore account, with Jack robbing his own bank electronically, which seems possible since he is the top IT guy there. Mary Lynn Rajskub plays Jack's assistant Janet and she looks an awful lot like Jenna Fischer who plays Pam Beesly on The Office.


Jenna Fischer


Mary Lynn Rajskub

Despite it's tech title, Firewall is a run of the mill, mainstream Hollywood film in which the outmuscled good guy outfights the younger, stronger bad guy in the end. When a film's conclusion is based strictly on a mismatched fight, you know you've seen a dud.



Firewall is drawing fans anxious to see Harrison Ford back on the silver screen, and probably quite a few techies interested to see just how ridiculous the tech aspects of the story are. Like a bad episode of McGyver, our hero figures out a way to transfer money without the benefit of terminal in the server closet. All the terminals were moved out when the other bank began to merge with Jack's bank. But....do we not see a terminal that gets used in the server room later on in the film??? Oh, you're not supposed to notice, because this is an elaborate, sophisticated, intelligent, high-tech film, right?



The acting was suitably one-dimensional all around. Ford has played the senior executive with the usual desperate threat to "Leave my family alone" so many times its a wonder they just didn't cut and paste scenes from his past film to make this one.

I wouldn't see it again or recommend it.