Grandpa vs. the bad guys

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, February 9, 2006

The first time you see Harrison Ford with his onscreen children in “Firewall,” you could be forgiven for thinking that Grandpa has come to visit the kids. It’s official: Indiana Jones is gray and grizzled these days.

In fact, Ford is playing father to an 8-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter, whose lives are in peril for most of “Firewall.” Ford’s character is a high-tech security executive at a Seattle bank. His family, including wife Virginia Madsen, is taken hostage by a sleek criminal mastermind (Paul Bettany) whose crew plans on stealing $100 million in transferred bank accounts.

What distinguishes this plot from a zillion other hostage movies is the amount of broadband it flexes; from its title onward, “Firewall” is a parade of binary code, iPods, and people clacking away at keyboards in tense situations. Before laptops and cell phones, this movie could not have existed.

Some of the gizmos are kind of fun, like a surveillance camera attached to a pen, which Ford tries to circumvent. But when they resort to a GPS monitor on the family dog, it’s overkill.

Don’t let the high-tech gloss fool you. When push comes to shove, a well-placed pickax will still do the job.

Vancouver, B.C. locations stand in for the Seattle environs; needless to say, it rains all the time. But much of the movie takes place indoors, within the walls of Ford’s lavish home and the interiors of the bank.

The weirdly underused supporting cast includes Robert Forster and Alan Arkin as bank associates, and Robert Patrick as a banker whose function consists of getting in Ford’s way. The best part is taken by Mary Lynn Raskjub, lately a hit on TV’s caffeinated “24,” as Ford’s quirky secretary. Virginia Madsen, collecting a nice paycheck after her lovely comeback in “Sideways,” appears pleased to be in a Harrison Ford movie.

Director Richard Loncraine once made a British film, “Bellman and True,” which had a somewhat similar bank-robbery plot. There are odd lapses in logic (why do the villains kidnap the family at night, only to wait until the next morning to launch their plan?), but at least Loncraine keeps it moving. The premise is tired, but it works as a matinee time-killer.

There’s really one game here. As we watch the bad guys grow increasingly more menacing, we anxiously wait for the butt-kicking president from “Air Force One” to make his appearance. We believe in Ford not because of his performance or his age, but because he’s Harrison Ford. He’s done it before and, with the help of a personal trainer and a stunt double, he’ll do it again.

Paul Bettany (left) and Harrison Ford in “Firewall.”