The new thriller Firewall works a number of changes on some familiar material. It
demonstrates that the tried and true Hollywood product,
no matter how often it appears, remains entertaining and engaging. Whatever its
debt to hundreds of movies from the past, it also suggests new directions in
its genre, emphasizing once again that popular film in general often responds
to its contexts more accurately and perceptively than a whole talk show full of
expert professional commentators. The film in fact examines a number of
unpleasant realities and subsequent tensions of life in this time and place.
Harrison Ford plays Jack Stanfield, a
highly successful executive in charge of computer security for a chain of banks
on the verge of a merger with a larger conglomerate. He owns a grand sailboat,
lives in a magnificent house designed by his architect wife (Virginia Madsen),
with the requisite two spoiled children, a 14-year-old daughter and her
8-year-old brother. Aside from the stress involved in the merger and his
dislike of the people who negotiate it, life is good — until, of course, in
the tradition of the form, everyday life explodes into nightmare, and evil, in
the person of a smooth, smart, utterly vicious thief, Bill Cox (Paul Bettany), violently intrudes.
Cox and his gang, heavily armed and
equipped with the latest electronic gear, invade the Stanfield home, bind and
gag the family, and begin the process transforming Jack’s safe, comfortable
world into a place of danger and fear. The crooks plan to use Jack’s access to
the bank’s computers and his expertise to steal 100 million dollars and
transfer it to an untraceable offshore account.
Distinguishing Firewall from many other similar works, the gang employs an array
of sophisticated electronic equipment eerily similar to the stuff that the
current administration uses to spy on American citizens — listening devices,
surveillance cameras, cell phone taps, etc. — to carry out their scheme. They
plant a miniature camera and audio transmitter on Jack as he goes about his
daily business, for example, so that he will obey their orders and keep their
scheme secret. The audience sees much of the action, in fact, on the computer
screens and television monitors that the gang installs all over Jack’s house,
ironically paralleling the elaborate system that the bank itself uses for
security.
The intimidation of the family to
force Jack to cooperate, a relatively common contrivance of the form, leads to
more complex and unusual plot situations. In its attention to technology and
intricate planning, Firewall suggests
a big caper flick shown from the victim’s point of view, a complicated endeavor
that Jack must somehow prevent while protecting his wife and children. When it
turns out that he must help Cox accomplish his scheme, he becomes, in effect,
an accomplice, coming up with solutions to unforeseen problems, sweating
through a couple of sticky situations, assisting his dangerous enemies in the
hope of saving his family.
In keeping with the high-tech nature
of Jack’s profession, the movie dwells on the constant presence of the latest
electronics in just about every area of his everyday life — burglar alarms,
computers, cell phones, fax machines, domestic and bank surveillance equipment,
his son’s sophisticated toys and games, his daughter’s withdrawal into
television and her CD player, even a location signal on his straying dog’s
collar. Appropriately, however, his skill with all that machinery enables him
finally to mount a counterattack to foil the robbery and rescue his family,
indicating the script’s ambivalence toward a technology that both serves and
endangers its users.
Firewall manipulates its situation and people with considerable skill and polish,
carefully particularizing Jack Stanfield’s environment, endowing the ironic
predicament of a computer expert forced to break into his own system, a banker
robbing his own bank, with a steadily increasing tension. Jack’s desperate
attempts to aid the criminals while evading the bank’s complicated surveillance
system enlists the audience on his side, which also means that the viewer,
hoping for his success, also shares something of his guilt, a nice touch.
In addition to its attention to the
latest in technology and criminality, the movie suggests some ironic commentary
on the predicament in which snooping of all kinds now places all of us, both as
victims and voyeurs.
Firewall (PG-13), directed by
Richard Loncraine, is playing at Canandaigua
Theatres, Culver Ridge 16, Eastview 13, Geneseo Theatres, Greece
Ridge 12, Henrietta 18, Pittsford Cinema, Tinseltown
This article appears in Feb 15-21, 2006.
