- Take a pot shot but be warned.

Firewall is part heist movie and variation on a readily-used formula used in a movie like Ransom (1996): the ideal family roost is threatened because criminals are baiting the successful head of the house to hand over riches while the family is taken hostage. In Firewall a dislikeable, nasty and technologically thrift bank robber is more subtle. While the family is abducted, as is the norm in these movies, the criminal mastermind Bill Cox (Paul Bettany) wants the knowledge of a security expert, Jack Stanfield (Harrison Ford), to disengage the security networks in a bank he’s protecting so he can wire down millions of dollars into Cox’s Cayman Island bank account with minimal fuss and keep his family alive. The difference is that the process is secretive, underhanded and technologically driven, and without the CIA negotiating to a crackpot on the other side of the street in an apartment.

The formula is standard Hollywood fare but the hook is during a scene where Stanfield enters his lounge room and the television is playing sports telecast in the background. The sport’s commentary is domestic comforts and family accessories: families sit around a television set watching sport (and earlier, with appropriate foreshadowing, a horror movie). Then, the reality hits. Stanfield is face-to-face with his family’s abductor in his own home. It is this separation of ideal family life and its threat which makes the contrast striking and real.

Adding to the contrast are the clearly defined opposites of Stanfield and Cox, which takes centre stage leaving the supporting players meagre (including Virginia Madsen as Stanfield’s wife). The two leads are separate identities: one represents the American Dream and success; he is the honest working family man, a right standing citizen. The other is deceitful and domineering, the CEO of abuse of the system and technology, on the side of wrong. The threat to Stanfield is that he could lose his identity when technological mis-usage could frame him for the sins of the provocateur. Identity and personal security and investment in that identity are strong themes here. And blaming others for the wrongdoings of yourself, also a related theme here, is symptomatic of humanity. Cox is in desperate need of redemptive overhaul or punitive elimination, the choice between these is the film’s decision and ultimate outcome.

After a suspenseful first half the momentum fades and the plot loses impetus, probably because we have seen what happens in this sort of set-up all before – and Cox’s psychopath is overdone – and even the good performances of Ford and Bettany can’t save it. The ending leaves unanswered questions and so one concludes the movie has been about other things: it argues emotively and convincingly, on its own terms, for traditional American values in the face of internal threats, not external worries, circa post 9-11 movies with similarly themed stories about insecurity. By the end, though, the answers to serious issues are fabricated and superficial.

A small movie for Ford, who hums effectively through this, and still looks fit, whose reviving of the long-awaited Indiana Jones next year should prove bigger and more popular. Strange, considering Firewall should hit a nerve with many American movie-goers.