Marvelous Movie Monday - Firewall

Click the post title for a link to the imdb site entry about this movie.

Yay! A date night! Eric and I actually got to go to a real movie in the THEATER on Saturday night - buttered popcorn and a shared pop, too!

We also got to go to a restaurant which I will review for you later.

So, about Firewall:

Stars Harrison Ford as a man in charge of security for all of a bank's computer operations. Pretty big responsibility. There's a bank robber, played by Paul Bettany, a wife of Harrison Ford played by Virginia Madsen (remember her in Fire with Fire? If you don't you didn't go into puberty in the 80's because her co-star was Craig Sheffer, an 80's hottie), then the kids and various other bit players. Some bigger actors playing bit parts were Robert Patrick (the bad terminator cop in T-2), as the guy in charge of a merger the bank is going through and Alan Arkin is Harrison's boss.

What happens is this robber (Paul Bettany) and his helpers kidnap Han Solo's family and hold them hostage so Han will get into the bank's computer system and transfer a bunch of money through to some off shore accounts without getting caught, of course, by the new boss-merger guy played by the Terminator, who happens to already be kind of wary of Han because he doesn't really know him and they've had some rough meetings regarding the company's security.

There's too much twisty-turny stuff to give away the plot or the ending, and it's all too much to even mention, but it does keep you on the edge of your seat.

Because I am a mom, I was pretty happy with Virginia Madsen's performance. She took care of her kids as best she could in a difficult situation. There was a particularly heart-wrenching part where the son, who is severely allergic to peanuts is given peanut-laced cookies by the robber, who is trying to make a point to Han so that he will DO AS HE ASKS! Anyway, it is a pretty tense couple of seconds as the robber let them go through the kid's backpack and their house looking for the antidote and the kid's not breathing and they can't find it and they realize HE HAS IT. And Harrison has to put his tail between his legs and "ask nicely." Being a parent of a child with health issues, it is especially hard to watch.

The robber is also kind of spiteful and forces Han Solo to fire his Administrative Assistant (let's just call her Chewey). Which, everyone knows, you don't mess with the assistant, you will regret it in the end, because it is Chewey, of course who will help Han Solo save the day!

I liked the action, it was very suspenseful, with twists around every corner. But the ending was kind of flat. After all the hell they put Han Solo through they should have explained how his life got back to normal without him losing his job. And the Robert Patrick character wasn't totally developed. He could have been played by someone less famous and it would have been fine, but since it was played by him, you wanted to see him more, but didn't.

I'm only slightly disappointed. It could have been much worse, but the suspense kind of makes up for it.