They have Harrison Ford's family, and he's going to get them back.

The Movie: Firewall, directed by Richard Loncraine
Recommendation: Dee
Reason: See title.

There is one good thing about this movie, and it's that Carly Schroeder continues to get work. A young actress of her caliber deserves to get as much screen time as possible, work up a thorough resume and when she becomes the next Jodie Foster, we can all look back and say "Remember Mean Creek? That sure was an awesome movie." Because it was an awesome movie, and you should all go out, rent or buy it and enjoy how subtle and nuanced her performance in that film was. Do me the honor of _not_ picking up a copy of Firewall.

I can't really address the technical aspects of this film. It'd be great if, just once, some techy guy being held hostage to force him to be a 1337 H4XX0RZ would lie, and the stupid bastards who'd taken him hostage believed him. We get Harrison Ford, hacking the Gibson with an iPod and half of a fax machine instead. Apple's cool and all, but c'mon, not even an iPod is more AWESOME than Acid Burn and Zero Cool. At least in 1995 they had an excuse-not a lot of people were 'net savvy enough to know that Hackers was completely off-the-charts impossible.

Firewall fails on a lot of levels, from technical impossibilities to the stupidest damn seven year old in the history of film (0 to Stockholm Syndrome in twenty minutes). I'd love to see someone flip this whole idea on its head, and have some sort of older woman-action-hero-Frances McDormand-type having to save her family from the bad guys. That'd be pretty cool.

-62/365 down, 303/365 to go