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Friday, February 10, 2006

'Firewall' is a flameout in the thriller department

By WILLIAM ARNOLD
P-I MOVIE CRITIC

In the new thriller "Firewall," Harrison Ford plays a Seattle bank executive whose family is held hostage by a gang of villains who want him to hack through the bank's security system and send them a hundred or so million dollars.

  MOVIE REVIEW
 

FIREWALL

DIRECTOR: Richard Loncraine

CAST: Harrison Ford, Paul Bettany, Virginia Madsen

RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes

RATING: PG-13 for some intense sequences of violence

GRADE: C

LINKS/TRAILERS
· Official site

PHOTO GALLERY

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Like most big-budget Hollywood movies these days, it's fast-paced and competently produced, and it works on a certain level, if only because there's always something going on. But, at the same time, it's highly unsatisfying and a rather grueling experience because:

  • Ford is so unpleasant to watch. All stars age, some well, some not so well. But Ford not only looks haggard-plus, he's lost all the magic that made him an appealing focus for a movie. He conveys an uptightness that's far beyond what his character should be feeling.

  • Paul Bettany makes a dull adversary. As the baddie who kidnaps Ford's family, he does all sorts of mean things but his villainy has no menace or flair. He's bland, and there's no catchy good-and-evil chemistry to the sparring between hero and heavy.

  • The plot is a cliche. This movie has been made a hundred times since "The Desperate Hours" struck the formula back in 1955. Also, the trailer gives away every beat of the script, so the movie seems like the extended-DVD version of something we've just seen.

  • It's way too full of tedious computer stuff. The dialogue is packed with incomprehensible techno-babble and we spend half the movie staring at computer screens. Bad enough we have to experience this in real life, do we need the same misery at the movies?

  • It disrespects Seattle. Not only is this yet another filmed-in-Vancouver movie that's supposed to be set here, it takes place in a blinding rainstorm of the kind only a Hollywood rain machine can make. As we all know, it never rains like that in Seattle.

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