Firewall

Director: Richard Loncraine
Screenwriter: Joe Forte
Starring: Paul Bettany, Harrison Ford, Jimmy Bennett, Virginia Madsen
Running time: 105 mins
Certificate: 12A

Jack Stanfield (Ford) is a computer security expert working to protect a Seattle bank from computer hackers. When his wife (Madsen) and children are kidnapped by identity thief and would-be bank robber Bill Cox (Bettany) he must help him pull off a scheme by fighting against his own security measures in order to save his family whilst struggling against being implicated in the crime himself.

Directed by Richard Loncraine (Wimbledon), Firewall starts off, albeit painfully slowly, as a by-the-numbers hostage thriller before then becoming a confused yet somehow predictable mess. In what is billed as an action thriller there is little to recommend it to either title. With respect to Harrison Ford and his good work in similar roles in the past, the ability to accept the heroics of a man who is supposed to be an everyman isn’t helped by the fact that he’s steadily progressing through his sixties.

The thrills never really come hard and fast enough to make Firewall an effective thriller. It takes practically half of the film to get any real suspense going and even then it's largely compromised by the fact that most of the ‘shocks’ can really be seen a mile off. If there were any sense of peril for the kidnapped family then the film may well have been more effective, but instead it becomes plain a short time into the film that Bettany’s villain and his henchmen have very little bite, their bark also lacking any real intimidation. With the ending hardly being a mystery from the outset, it is hardly surprising that the audience can’t really care too much as to how it comes about.

Despite a better-than-average cast, the lower-than-average film really gives them little chance to do well. Ford serves his purpose in the type of role he now knows like the back of his hand (as do we), whilst Bettany also does the best with what he’s given. Ford’s wife and children are under-used from a plotline point of view. Their only real purpose is to be used as bargaining power and whilst they are given things to do, most of their screen time feels terribly contrived, with their relationship being truly generic with negligible chemistry.

Overall, Firewall is a waste of the actors’ talent and everybody’s time, maybe passable as a rainy day time-filler but little else.