Running time: 104 minutes
Starring: Harrison Ford, Paul Bettany, Virginia Madsen
Rating 4 out of 10
It's been a while since Harrison Ford has had a bona fide box office hit, which for a man who single-handedly dominated the box office takings of the 80s and 90s must be something of a worry. His recent pedestrian run in films such as Hollywood Homicide and K19: The Widowmaker is unlikely to change with Firewall, a self-consciously contemporary affair in which Ford employs his familiar no-nonsense persona to dwindling effect. Ford is Jack Stanfield - a Harrison Ford screen name if ever there was one - an ordinary guy with a loving wife (Virginia Madsen) and two kids, and his job as security expert for a leading bank allows them a comfortable lakeside dwelling (the kind useful for escaping in boats from). But when Jack's family is kidnapped by the evil Bill Cox (Paul Bettany), he is forced to become the inside man at his own company and carry out a complex financial switch which will net the villain millions.
A hi-tech cat-and-mouse chase ensues, with Jack trying to stay one step ahead of his enemies and outwit their next move, while they heighten the threat level to his family. Being a Ford film there are plenty of opportunities for fists to fly, although it has to be said that these are less convincing than when our hero was at his peak.
The film attempts to blind us with science and modern-day gadgetry - at one point Ford quickly transforms his daughter's Ipod into a nano-busting security device - but this turns into its biggest flaw. In a rapidly changing world some of the technology here seems either already jaded or simply unbelievable: the final chase which sees Ford using a pet satellite website to track his family leads to the loudest guffaw of the whole thing.
Bettany continues his neat trick of acting everyone else off the screen by apparently doing very little (he'll have to watch out or big Hollywood stars will stop employing him for fear of looking bad), while Madsen is given little to do but makes a decent fist of looking anxious. As for Ford, we can only hope that Indy IV becomes a reality sooner rather than later.
Paul Hurley
