Thursday, February 09, 2006

Firewall

You might remember that last summer I posted about starring... well, appearing, in the new Harrison Ford movie Firewall. Well, last night I had the... priviledge?... no, ability to see the flick early as part of a preview promotion at Metropolis.

The movie in general wasn't all bad. The first 30 minutes were actually above average for your standard run of the mill thriller. What they did really well was making the plot rather plausible for a change. Most of the actions taken by the bad guys are explained and make sense. Note, I did say most... not all.

The scene that featured me was much too short to really make me feel like I was really in the movie. No, there was a blurry guy in a red shirt rocking out with a guitar that looked like me, but it wouldn't inspire anyone to say, "Hey! Weren't you in the movie?" even though I was at the premiere wearing the same outfit.

SPOILER ALERT!!!! Please do not keep reading if you plan on seeing the flick.






You should know from the trailer that Harrison Ford plays a security engineer guy for a major bank that is forced to work around his own security measures when Paul Bettany holds Ford's family hostage. The part that had me interested was how they kind of ripped off the first season episodes of 24 where Jack Bauer was in the exact same situation as both were wired up with cameras and microphones and are being watched at all times. Where this falls apart is when the bad guys choose to only do this for one day. The next day, oh, well, we trust Harrison now, so we won't do that whole deal again.

Now, most people know that to have wireless access, you need to be in range of a wireless router or access point. Sadly, the writers of this movie didn't know, as Harrison Ford is able to connect to the net under a bridge and Paul is able to check his Swiss bank account from the side of the road on a remote mountain pass.

But my biggest gripe with this movie was the number of groaner moments in the final 20 minutes. Sometimes movies have moments when you say to yourself, "Man, that was SUCH an AWESOME TWIST!" This movie didn't have that kind of moment. It had one of those, "No... no... no we are... no... you didn't just say... OMG... SHOOT ME!" What was this moment? Well, as the bad guys are running off to their base with his family, Ford stops to log into his online PetFinder service that tracks a GPS locator in their dog's collar. Oh yeah, that's right. The dog was taken with the family... because... well, he's just sooooo cute! Sigh.

After that it was all downhill.

But I was in it! SO IT WAS AWESOME! :-)

Let's just say I plan to rent it and rip ONE CHAPTER... and that's all I could probably watch ever again.

4 Comments:

Blogger Pie Man said...

Hollywood... computers... They. don't. mix.

Moan and whine all you want, but they'll still get it wrong. Scriptwriters are not specialists. This also happens to be why journalistic writing is not considered academic: because the writers aren't specialists.

12:13 AM  
Blogger Ty said...

Mike,

Charity, Terry & Alisha and I went to see the movie last night. We were all so thrilled when we saw your blurry body for that whopping 3 seconds! Way to rock it out on the guitar though man! I could totaly tell it was you...

I sure hope they paid you well, and I was a little bummed that they didn't have your name in the credits... I was hoping to see:

Blurry Guitar Guy: Mike Worth

Oh well, maybe next time.

When's that house warming of yours? Charity and I look forward to getting together with you and Jo.

Peace:

Ty

11:37 PM  
Blogger Kurtis Findlay said...

Hey Mike, glad to hear that your scene didn't actually get cut! I will for sure check out this flick when it hits the cheapo rack at the local rogers video previously viewed section.

7:20 AM  
Blogger Kurtis Findlay said...

Also to tie in with what was said by Pie Man:

Computers and movies don't mix because they become extremely dated extremely fast.

7:22 AM  

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