Firewall (2006)

Movie Info

Movie Info

Run Time
1 hour and 45 minutes

VP Content Ratings

Violence
6/10
Language
1/10
Sex & Nudity
1/10
Rated P-13. Our ratings: V-6 ; L- 1; S/N-1 . Running time: 1 hour 45 min.

O LORD, my God, I call for help by day; I cry out in the night before thee.
Let my prayer come before thee, incline thy ear to my cry!
For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol.
Psalm 88:1-3

Firewall

As far as we can tell Jack Stanfield (Harrison Ford) is a secular man not given to praying or turning to the Psalms for comfort or inspiration. He would do well to do so, so beset by troubles is he in what has become a familiar Harrison Ford vehicle. This time around Ford is a security chief for a bank in Seattle married to architect wife Beth Stanfield (Virginia Madsen) and father of two children. At a lunch with possible client Bill Cox (Paul Bettany) he is told that his wife and children are being held as hostages until he secures an electronic transfer of $100 million to an off shore account. Indeed, this has happened, with Cox’s henchmen brutally tying up the family and installing themselves and their computer equipment in their ultra-modern home. The villains place a pen with a miniature camera into Jack’s lapel so that they can monitor him while at work. When he tells them that with the new security system he has installed there are no longer terminals in the bank by which he can directly copy and send the accounts of wealthy clients to the off shore account, Cox tells him that he had better figure out a way, or else.

Beth attempts to escape and Jack to thwart the villains, but Cox each time, growing more vicious, thwarts them. As the suspense mounts, Jack uses a combination of fax parts, cell phone, laptop and iPod to obtain and send the accounts that Cox wants. And, of course, there is a final bone crunching, bloody struggle that—well, you know the drill, having seen Harrison Ford as the beleaguered hero in so many other films. As with most action/thriller films, we have been led to hate the brutal villains so much that, against all that we believe as Christians, we cheer when the villains are not just apprehended, but made to suffer and to die in spectacular ways. This is a good (not really) film to eat popcorn with (at least when it comes out on DVD, theater popcorn being obscenely expensive!), but only if you catch it at a matinee or wait until it shows at a cheap seat theater.

 

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