Movie Review: Firewall (no spoilers)

We saw Firewall on Pay-Per-View last night. The plot: A security specialist is forced into robbing the bank that he's protecting, as a bid to pay off his family's ransom. Interesting premise but not all that interesting a delivery. Harrison Ford played Harrison Ford (think of him in Airforce One yelling "GET OFF MY PLANE!") Either you like that sort of thing or you don't. The lead villain was played by Bill Cox, doing his best pale imitation of Alan Rickman.

Have you noticed how all the villains used to have Russian accents and now they have steely British accents? When did our only international ally because the source of our movie angst?

Mary Lynn Rajskub, who plays Ford's secretary, out-acts both Ford and Cox. She's interesting and compelling. The rest of the cast, considerably less so. This is a problem in a movie that hinges on you rooting for the survival of Ford's family members. I really didn't care if they survived or not. The storyline, though action-packed right from the get-go, sometimes reads like a serial mystery for kids (everything mentioned is used later) and sometimes like a McGyver episode.

Kudos to the animal handlers for placing what appears to be a very dumb dog in this film--must be hard for him to get work. The dog seems to want to run away from Ford, his supposedly beloved master, even as Ford is "rescuing" him. Then, again, I'm not sure I blame him on this one.

Still, it had a few plot twists (the last half-hour was better than the rest of the film.) On the whole, I give it two out of four Jujubees.