There are few convincing action heroes out there right now. Most of them are wicked intelligent, have unlimited resources, possess an inexhaustable library of smug one-liners, and altogether seem to pull things off much too quickly and easily. So it's a shame that even Harrison Ford, arguably the progenitor of the modern day action hero (what with roles like Han Solo and Indiana Jones), has been reduced to this kind of mind-numbing dreck. Everyone in this movie is a zombie, completely devoid of life or energy.
Firewall is all about well-to-do upperclass electronic security specialist Jack Stanfield (Ford), and his cutesy well-to-do upperclass family: Beautiful, dutiful stay-at-home blonde mom Beth (Virginia Madsen); witless pre-teen son Andrew (Jimmy Bennett), who is also allergic to peanuts; and pretty blonde teenage daughter Sarah (Carly Schroeder, in a drastic decrease in quality from her bold performance in 2003's Mean Creek). And did I mention that they have a plasma screen TV in every room? Or that they have a dog named--of all the cutesy and precocious names in the world--Rusty? Everything is all normal and disgustingly upperclass-y until the villainous Bill Cox (Paul Bettany) decides to mess with their pitch perfect Better Homes & Gardens lifestyle.
Bill is very grumpy and very greedy for no particular reason, and wants some dough. Like, a lot. Like enough so that he could take said dough and whip it into several dozen batches of money cookies. To accomplish this, he and his groveling henchmen take Jack's family--even little waggy-tailed Rusty--hostage, and force Jack to infiltrate the security system that he created at the bank he works at unless he wants to see his family with decorative bulletholes punched in their foreheads. But somewhere on down the line (after about the fifty-fourth time I checked my watch), Jack decides to make the criminals play by his rules, all the while keeping out of the clutches of his alert boss (Robert Patrick) and finding out that his friendly co-worker (Robert Forster) might not be going over to his house just for dinner.
It's only the second month of 2006, and already we have a contender for the most depressingly unenjoyable action thriller of the year. What's especially disheartening is the fact that everyone here has seen (much) better days. Harrison Ford continues to commit career suicide (much in the same way Bruce Willis did last year in Hostage--which also co-starred little Jimmy Bennett--before making the excitingly unique Sin City), muttering and growling his way through the entire film. What Firewall needed was an adrenaline shot to the arm, and frankly, Ford, looking older and more tired in each successive film, is far beyond being able to provide that. Instead of having a lively, pumped-up protagonist, we're stuck with some dreary geriatric schmoe who doesn't even seem happy when the script calls for it, and who seems to be half-asleep most of the time. Paul Bettany manages to add a little life as the film's stock villain, making his flat dialogue as menacing as possible, but I don't think anyone who saw Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World will agree that he's doing anything deserving of his capabilities. Robert Patrick and Robert Forster are sadly tacked-on as afterthoughts; all of the characters are so lifeless and devoid of any kind of...anything, that when Ford, Patrick, and Forster share the same frame early on, all I could think was, "Wow, Han Solo, the T-1000, and Max Cherry are in the same room. That'd be one crazy party."
But the absolute worst part of the film, even worse than screenwriter Joe Forte's illogical twists and laughable psuedo-intelligent technical mumbojumbo, is Virginia Madsen as Beth Stanfield. Madsen, who was in dozens of cheap Z-grade flicks before she finally struck gold as Maya in 2004's brilliant Sideways, seems to be reverting back to her normal career choices, and coming from the same woman who gave one of the most subtle, beautiful performances of the first half of the decade, it's an immense disappointment. She has several interesting films due later this year, and I can only hope that she can escape her completely phoney, shrill, and ridiculously melodramatic performance here, because her newly-discovered talent (which was ignored for 21 years) is too good to let go of this soon.
Director Richard Loncraine, who I am completely new to, does the blandest of bland jobs. Pretty much any cliché you've seen from any action movie of the last twenty years is alive and well here, much to the audience's dismay and utter boredom. It's not even that his direction is oustandingly bad...it's just so unoriginal that it blends in with its surroundings, much like a chameleon. A very, very boring chameleon.
Firewall is an exceptionally stupid thriller that does nothing for the genre or for the audience's entertainment...would it have taken that much energy to have a little fun with the movie and its somewhat interesting plot? If this is how the planned fourth Indiana Jones movie is going to turn out, let's hope that there are plenty of snakes and Nazis around to divert our attention from grumpy old man Ford.
