What is it with Harrison Ford getting into big trouble and having to bail himself out? First "The Fugitive", now this? In a way the two stories are similar, except.. they're not really. Very decent movie, this, it has my stamp of approval. I like how the story unfolds in the beginning, when there are some unfilled gaps that make you wonder "is this guy important? should I pay attention to his name?". But Harrison does a hell of a performance too, in fact overall the acting is very good. Well, the plot is generally very good, but at the end it comes apart a bit. First of all, there's only so many different ways to make stealing money seem novel, so they try to keep you waiting for quite a while wondering what's going on, which is great. But then once the cat is out of the bag, there isn't that much mystery left. As Plan A goes awry, that's a twist I don't quite buy. A guy as well organized and well-informed as Bill Cox should know about the merger and all that it entails. Then it takes a turn for the desperate where we go from "there's no way he can save his family to", "hey, maybe there is something he can do". That lack of direction lost me a bit, it seems a bit of a filler. In fact, most of the second half does. Inevitably, people die, there's shooting and finally a long fight scene where the good guy wins. I mean that kind of thing is done to death and it's a bit disappointing to come out of a story like this. Still, the strong intro keeps it level and I still appreciate the whole.

What's fun about this production is that they got most of the technical things right. Which honestly shouldn't be too hard, just walk into the building of a big company and take some shots. They do add certain features for effect though, like the green on black Unix terminals, make them look very 80s. One mistake I noticed was when he was mounting his cdrom, he typed "mount /dev_/cdrom /mnt_/cdrom -t iso9660" (I added underscores where he used spaces, those spaces shouldn't be there). Otherwise you got nice Dell flat monitor, the Dell servers in the data center, all looks kosher. The improvised scanner he uses to read off the account numbers off a screen is actually more MacGyver than hackerish, he takes an actual scanner and connects it to an ipod, not that hi-tec.

Paul Bettany does a good job as bad guy, even though I like his smug, bright side much more than his violent, desperate side, which isn't all that convincing. I just remembered where I've seen him before, a few years ago I was made to sit through an incredibly boring tennis movie called "Wimbledon". Credit to Paul then, had I placed him right when I started watching "Firewall", I wouldn't have bought his bad guy character.

The worst thing about this movie is probably.. the title. By now, everyone knows what a firewall is and why you should have one, so playing on that common knowledge doesn't seem terribly clever considering they don't really deal with firewalls in the movie. Going by the title, you would think it plays a crucial part.

And Jack, if you didn't work for a bank all your life I wouldn't believe you could type 24-character IBAN numbers that fast without even double checking.

Oh and good job not simply reproducing "Enemy of the state".

So they imploded a building in Rangoon, all bad guys got killed, no civilians. Perfect mission. :rolleyes: Then, tinman killed about a thousand people in Tadjikistan as a result of nuclear explosion (which was played down, no fancy mushroom cloud or anything), also thousands more casualties potentially in Pakistan. Then, tinman, the devil that he is, killed the black dude, hate crime. Then, they flew into Russia, got intercepted and instead of having some coffee and explaning the situation, they just engaged into combat and took down the fighters. For one thing, it might be interesting that two *stealth* planes couldn't resist radar. Secondly, does Russia only have two fighters? I'm sure that's not going to be any kind of diplomatic crisis. Anyway, then they land in Alaska and the pilot kills the doctor. Well it was sort of an accident, manslaughter. Then he goes mental and kills about 5 other people before he boards tinman (which being an AI plane always looked weird with that seat in the cockpit) and kills another 20-30 fleeing the base. Then, he calls his boss, everything cool, one last mission. By now tinman has no stealth (why?), so to stay under radar they fly into South Korea at 15, yes 15 feet height. South Korea is an *ally* but I guess we don't need their help, we can manage. Meanwhile in North Korea, Wade kills a bunch of soldiers with a machine gun round. Funny how as she's fleeing and limping, they are chasing her with dogs, she keeps gaining ground on them. Anyway, things looking pretty gloomy for her when hubby (prolly) comes in to rock and roll. First he blows the gate open (about 5 more people dead), then he sets a forest alight killing another 20 and some dogs. He lands (great idea) and finds her. Then he kills the sniper. Finally a chopper is bearing down on them and tinman wakes up to life. He's out of missiles, so machine gun will do. Finally, in the ultimate act of sacrifice, the machine instructed to do one thing only, survive, commits suicide.

And then the happy couple returns to base, mourns the dead black guy (as always) and lives happily everafter. And the thousands of dead people? What can I tell ya, wrong place at the wrong time, boy.

"You wanna go with me to NBC?"
"Yeah, I think we really got something here."
"What do we got?"
"An idea."
"What idea?"
"An idea for the show."
"I still don't know what the idea is!!!!!"
"It's about nothing."
"Right..."
"Everybody's doing something, we'll do nothing!"

There is a worry that if you watch too much television, it may warp your perception of reality to believe that what you see on tv is actually real. That's one take on it, how about a second opinion?

The culture of soccer fans is one that I've become quite intimate with over the last 5-6 years. I won't say that I've seen it all, but I have seen the bulk of it. I've talked to maybe 200-300 different people about soccer, read their opinions, had discussions etc. I haven't adopted everything in the culture, in fact there's probably a lot more that I've rejected than what I've adopted. But if you blend in with these people, one thing that will strike you is how they manage to get their whole life philosophy all entangled into following the sport. That's right, if you talk to the "real fans" (as opposed to the "plastic"/"bandwagoner"/"gloryhunter" variety) as they call themselves, what they will convey to you is that supporting a "smaller club" is more "honorable". If you stick with a small club through all the ups and downs (but mostly downs) and then the club wins some trophy, apparently that victory is so much better than winning something every year. Why, because the accumulated "suffering" has made this climax look a lot better than it really is. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? It's not religion, but it does have a similar vibe, doesn't it? "Blessed are those who suffer"? I know there's a line that goes something like that in the Bible. So basically, suffering is a Good Thing (tm).

Which brings us right back to the core of the issue. I saw "Signs" on tv last night. If you haven't seen it, maybe you're under the impression that it's a nail biting thriller packed with excitement. Well, let me relieve you of that delusion right now. It is basically a movie about nothing. Just like George Costanza's idea on "Seinfeld". Only they based a two hour production on that idea. "No story? You gotta have a story!" "Who says you gotta have a story?" Who indeed. The story is this.. two brothers live out on a farm, aliens come to kill them. Only when I write it in one sentence, you probably get the idea that the movie actually did have a plot? My bad. This is the blueprint of every scene in the movie:

We start with an annoying camera angle that doesn't really show you much and clearly isn't showing you what you want to see. Then gradually it moves onto the character, the room, some more vital part of the scene. There is no sound, it's completely quiet, no music, no sound effects. You see Mel Gibson, he looks depressed. His face is like set in stone, expressionless, he's just standing there. He says one sentence. Camera turns to Joaquin Phoenix. He's sitting down, looks unhappy, he takes a long pause before he replies with one sentence.

And then they copy/paste that onto a 2h roll of film. The thread about the aliens is actually hard to imagine being done any worse. In the 1.5h build-up they are totally paranoid and terrified about someone making a crop circle in their field. Then when they actually meet the alien, they beat him up with a baseball bat and leave him bleeding to death in the kitchen, not even making sure that he's dead. Then there's something about how Mel is a minister, his wife was killed in a car crash and he re-gains his faith at the end, total bs.

So what about the suffering? You probably know where this is going, don't you? See, Mel Gibson is in this movie. So every Mel Gibson fan probably raced to the movies to see their favorite in this production. But this is a lot like that soccer fan supporting his team when they're about to get relegated. This has to be one of the worst movies Mel Gibson ever played in, and yet the faithful fan will still go watch it. Even knowing that it sucks, he will still go see it. Because that's what fans do. And after a movie like this, they go and see.. say, "The Patriot" and they think that is a great movie. Well, if you compare it to "Signs", it certainly is.

I'm impressed, I'm really impressed. They cut out the bs plot knowing they can't write a good plot anyway and just focused on what they do well, which is action scenes. If you haven't caught onto what I'm talking about, it's The Transporter 2. The first Transporter movie had a great first 20 minutes, action packed driving, cool scenes. Then it completely faded. It wasn't good because it was trying to be good. The second installment from Luc Besson doesn't try so hard, it just knows what it's good at. First of all, what completely dominates and sells this movie is Jason Statham's character. This guy is so cool it makes me want to drive a car. I love the little details - the gloves, the super clean car, the suit, the haircut - it's all so well worked. What I mean about not trying too hard is that Besson is content with basing the whole story around Frank, because that's the only interesting concept of this story. There's plenty of funny physics, another thing I liked. You will see wild scenes of cars racing to an instant complete stop, impossible martial arts and so on. They don't even try making it look real, and why should they, it's much more entertaining this way. But to show you just how badly they fail when trying, the movie comes complete with an uber fake Italian bad guy. There isn't a thing about this guy that says Italian. His protege is a greatly annoying bimbo small arms expert, the only one besides Frank who has funny physics. This one parades around in her underwear shooting guns, but in bed with the big boss, though she's naked, she covers herself up. Roight. I used to think a good action movie needs a great bad guy, movies like 'Die Hard with a vengeance' have taught us that. But if you see this, all you expect to see is Frank and he's worth the hour and a half all on his own. From the cool black Audi to the supply of shirts and suits right in his trunk.

Oh that reminds me, the music is very cool at times, but it doesn't have the kind of long, powerful sequences like we'd like. Come to think of it, the plot is a bit like 'Man on fire', except it's not.

Entirely too lazy to describe and discuss its many, many levels, strong ties to "1984" and the "Matrix", so I will only say: go and see the best movie you've seen this year!

And lots of points for the unpredictable ending! :star: