Harrison Ford plays the head of security at a major global bank whose wife and children are held for ransom in order to convince him to rob his own bank for millions of dollars.
Release Date: February 10, 2006 Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures Director: Richard Loncraine
Screenwriter: Joe Forte Starring: Harrison Ford, Paul Bettany, Virginia Madsen, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Robert Patrick, Robert Forster Alan Arkin Genre: Action, Thriller MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for some intense sequences of violence) Official Website: Firewallmovie.com
Computer security specialist Jack Stanfield (Harrison Ford) works for the Seattle-based Landrock Pacific Bank. A trusted top-ranking executive, he has built his career and reputation on designing the most effective anti-theft computer systems in the industry, protecting the bank's financial holdings from the constant threat of increasingly sophisticated internet hackers with his complex network of tracers, access codes and firewalls.
Jack's position affords a comfortable life for him, his architect wife Beth (Virginia Madsen) and their two young children - a standard of living that includes a beautiful home in a residential community just outside the city.
But there's a vulnerability in Jack's system that he has not accounted for: himself. It's a vulnerability that one very ruthless and resourceful thief is poised to exploit.
Bill Cox (Paul Bettany) has been studying Jack and his family for many months; monitoring their online activity, listening to their calls and learning their daily routines with an arsenal of digital and video recorders and parabolic microphones that tap into the most personal of information. He knows the names of their children's friends, their medical histories, and the I.D. code for the security station that guards their neighborhood.
Having spent the better part of a year methodically infiltrating every aspect of Jack's identity, Cox is now ready to make good on his investment.
Leading a tight team of mercenary accomplices, he seizes control of the Stanfield house, making Beth and the kids terrified hostages in their own home and Jack his unwilling pawn in a scheme to steal $100 million from the Landrock Pacific Bank.
With every possible escape route shrewdly anticipated and blocked by Cox, every potential ally out of reach and the lives of his wife and children at stake, Jack is forced to find a breach in his own formidable security system to siphon funds into his captor's offshore account - incriminating himself in the process and eradicating any electronic evidence that Cox ever existed.
Under constant surveillance, he has only hours to accomplish the risky transactions while desperately hunting for a loophole in the thief's own impenetrable wall of subterfuge and false identities to save his family and beat Cox at his own game.
Firewall
is vintage Harrison Ford…even if Harrison
Ford is pretty vintage himself!
Taut
with suspense, this film pits Ford’s family man Jack Stansfield against the evil manipulator
Bill Cox (Bettany.) While Stansfield’s family involves a pair
of children and a wife, and Cox’s crew incorporates various
standard henchmen, the film is a two actor show. Within the context
of the film, Stansfield has overseen the firewalls electronically
built to protect his bank, but can he provide a human firewall to
protect his family? — Continued
I know,
they’re not supposed to be comedies, but still, they make me laugh. I mean think about it. Bad guy wants money or power. He generally threatens someone else to get that money or power. He thinks he’s
all that. And by the end, he has been killed in some artistically
contrived manner and is clearly far from all that. — Continued
Ford
can still take a punch and chew the scenery. I really liked Bettany
as the smart, greedy bad guy. He wasn’t over the top evil,
but he delivered nasty in good quantities and had fun doing it.
The kids weren’t
annoying, which is refreshing. The mom, played by Virginia
Madsen, was strong and resolute, but cried in the right places.
I also enjoyed the supporting cast. Robert Patrick played Jack’s
counterpart in the other bank and more of him would have been
nice...
— Continued
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