Okay. First post. Be kind, I'm just getting the hang of this blog thing. Starting tomorrow you can let me know how messed up it is. Until then... here goes!

My first movie review.

You know, for my first movie review I'd like to start with something that I really liked and feel is, or is sure to become, a classic. Something along the lines of the first Rocky (yeah yeah yeah, I know... I said the FIRST Rocky!) or On The Beach, or A Bridge Too Far, or The Day the Earth Stood Still, or, well, anything good. Instead I'm gonna kick it off with Firewall.

Sigh. I remember the day when Harrison Ford was poised to become the Cary Grant, Clark Gable, or Gregory Peck of our generation. I also remember before that, of course, but I'm talkin' about just after Indiana Jones and the Rai... uh, I mean Raiders of the Lost Ark. Harry had promise and seemed to grow further and further as both and actor and an icon. Witness, The Mosquito Coast, Frantic, Reguarding Henry... the guy was on a roll!

Well that guy seems to have long since fallen asleep next to an alien cucumber and now we're stuck with his lifeless, dull, repetitive clone/replacement pod-dude. Huh.

Okay, so much for what I think of Harrison (oh where have you gone, Han Solo?) Ford. Now on to the movie.

You've seen those made-for-T.V. flicks where somebody's family is put in jeopardy and the everyman father/boyfriend/paperboy has to step up and save the day? The one where the kids are nothing more than a plot device that serve to be put in harm's way and, inevitably, get rescued by the afforementioned f/bf/pb? The same kind of flick where the wife is a sucessful, educated woman with a career of her own and a leading candidate for mother of the year yet somehow manages to not contribute one single positive thing to either the story or the movie in general?

Yep. It's one of those.

Early on you're introduced to Harry as a late 50-something computer supergenius (the least farcically unbelievable thing about the flick, I kid you not) who is... surprise... top of his field of electronic security for a bank that is being taken over by a bigger bank. Harry doesn't like the T-1000 (the last time I'll even bother to mention Robert Patrick as the guy who he's going to be working for after the takeover because that's about it for his involvement in the flick) and his children are stereotypically annoying movie kids who torment each other mercilessly only to recieve beatific smiles from their oh-so-loving parents who think such behavior is "cute". Of course the only purpose this really serves is to introduce a piece of malfunctioning electronic gear that, if you have more than IQ of13 (or have actually watched any of these kinds of movies), you will figure out pretty quickly is going to be... gasp!... hugely significant in about 52 more minutes. Assuming, of course, you stay with this thing that long.

Anyway, long story short: Bad Guy menaces family at home and makes Harry do all kinds of things at the office that make everyone think "What the hell is his problem?" The gist of the thing seems to be that Bad Guy wants Harry to transfer a ton of money to Bad Guy's overseas bank because only Harry can do it (he is a computer supergenius, remember?)

Meanwhile the fam does little besides stare blankly and do, well nothing.

Early on, Harry tells Bad Guy not to feed his ignorant son anything for no apparent reason. It takes all of about 20 more minutes before Bad Guy manages to get the kid to eat a cookie with peanuts in it. The little snot-nosed creep (the kid, not Bad Guy) is at least 10 or 12 but hasn't seemed to learn to read yet (or not to believe Bad Guys, either) because he goes ahead and scarfs the damned thing down. Surprise!... he's allergic to nuts and starts kickin' around on the kitchen floor like a fish in a parking lot until Bad Guy gives Harry the anitidote that he's snuck from the moron family's medical kit. This is the general kind of stupid plot devices that convince Harry that he'd better cooperate. Just havin' guns and stuff shoved in his and his family's faces isn't enough, I guess. Go figure.

Anyway, lots of stuff happens without really much happening and... surprise again!... Harry's family is rescued by Harry and all ends well. And just in case you actually rent this limp excuse for a movie, don't worry about the damned dog. Hell, Hollywood doesn't have the scrote to off even a mangy mutt anymore.

I know it's a pretty bare-bones review but trust me, it's not really worth much else. Three bucks for a rental isn't a total rip-off but I'll tell you what; had I paid full price for this turkey in the theater I would've been tempted to fire my gun through the screen just to smell something better than this pile of flaming monkey dung in the air.

One positive note, though! The mousy chick who plays Chloe O'Brian on 24 plays Harry's assistant and she steals every scene she's in. The best part, though? Harry's character is named Jack! Don't you figger that this chick just HAS to be sick of playing roles where she answers phones and pulls things up on computers for guys named Jack? Also, there's a scene where Harry and "Chloe" stop somewhere to pick up some supposedly important piece of gibberish from yet another minor office flunky and they wind up at some kind of weird charasmatic church concert thing. I was waiting for the rock and roll snake handlers to show up!

That's another thing, the script actually has a number of moments that could easily have been turned into dark comic gold but just never has the rocky mountain oysters to actually do something fun and unexpected. Knowing most of the people who are gonna be reading this thing, I just know that you'll know what I'm talkin' about when John goes ahead and rents this piece of past-it's-eat-by-date piece of mashmallow fluff of a flick for a bad movie night. But that's the real problem... it's bad, but not that bad. You know what I mean. There's "Speed 2" bad (is he eating the leaches?), or "Battlefield Earth" bad (Get into the learning machine![cue the Andrew Lloyd Webber score]), but this thing is just more like "Shattered" bad.

See? You don't even remember that one, do you?