I’m going to start with the things that are wrong with this movie, which is like shooting fish in a barrel. The story itself is kinda lame, every 500 years a serpent is chosen to become a celestial dragon. If it’s a good serpent, then things continue as expected for the next 500 years, but if it’s a bad serpent then life as we know it on Earth is over. Isn’t this a recipe for disaster? Only one failure and the world ends? To become a dragon the serpent has to join with a mystical force contained in a chosen girl when she turns 20 (the girls dies in the process of course), but we have a loophole! If the girl dies before the serpent joins with her the clock goes for another 500 years. For the humans who protect this girl the logical choice is to kill her at birth, or at least sometime before she hits 20. Let’s see… a few billion people or one baby. Tough call. Time to go all Spock on her ass!

There’s not much to say about the acting, it’s just bad. Not bad as in “these people couldn’t act their way out of a cut rate community theater production of Hamlet” but bad in the “I don’t want to be doing this, please pay me so I can go home” kind of way. The interaction between characters is just horrible in parts, enough where you just want to press fast forward and spare yourself the agony. This leads to the writing, which is also pretty bad. There are HUGE plot problems, HUGE. There’s a 1000ft snake (did I mention those serpents were kinda big?) slithering around Los Angeles, tearing down buildings and causing lots of havok… but nobody notices it. The opening scene of the movie shows a path of destruction through LA caused when the serpent first arrived, but the big snake itself wasn’t seen.. and wasn’t captured on any cameras.

That’s so stupid it was hard to keep watching.

But now for the good, the special effects. I think all but about $3.50 of the movies budget went into the CGI, and it’s really pretty good. Little details like a flag moving out of the way when a big creature walks past help set the scene for the battle in downtown LA. The obvious thing to compare the battle to is Transformers, and surprisingly it holds up pretty well. Scene after scene you see building being damaged, a big snake slithering up a sky scraper, weird dinosaur type things flying around and huddling on buildings, and it all looks good. It’s far from perfect, but much better than expected.

And that’s the only thing good I have to say about it, but it’s good enough for me to award a second star and to actually recommend that some of you give this movie a shot. If you can’t stand the 15 minutes of story setup at the beginning, just jump about 50 minutes into it and enjoy the eye candy. If you’re a big fan of sci-fi/fantasy films you might even like the story. I doubt it, but anything is possible.

The beginning is very much what I expected; Husband and Father Jack Stanfield (Ford) is getting ready for work and is chatting it up with the fam (just like all Ryan films). Typical sit-com/ made for TV crap; Wife Beth (Madsen), Daughter Sarah and son Andrew are bickering, Dad tries to fix everything, kisses their little heads, they ignore him… blah. blah, same old same old. I already told you it was predictable so don’t give me that look. Keep reading, it gets better.

Jack heads into work where we get to meet the rest of the clichéd characters in his world. The clueless boss played By Alan Arkin, Robert Patrick as the intimidating douche bag sent there to make the merger transition a seamless one and last but not least the mouthy secretary. Skip ahead to the end of Jack’s work day where he is accosted by a large man demanding he pay his online gambling debts. Jack is an upstanding guy and claims he not only doesn’t owe the money, he has never gambled in his life. The big guy threatens to sue him and he will see him in court. Of course everyone in ear shot hears this and it draws the attention of above mentioned douche bag, thus planting the needed motive to rob a bank later on in the story.

Jack turns to old friend and ‘cleaner’ Harry (Forster) to clear up his little misunderstanding about debts owed and packs up to go home for the night. Tonight is Pizza Night and he has to get home to the family.

Harry catches him just as he is leaving and asks him to join him for a drink so they can meet a potential financial backer and go into business for themselves once the merger is complete. They head to a bar where they meet Bill Cox (Bettany) and discuss this and that. Meanwhile, back at the ranch the family’s dinner arrives in the form of yummy pizza, but instead of Johnny the local pizza boy, this pizza is delivered by 4 heavily armed men intent on wrong doing. The bad guys tie up mom and kids and take pictures of them on their cell phones. But where will these pictures be sent you ask?

The meeting concludes and the 3 split to go their seperate ways. Jack to go home, Harry to catch a plane and just as the cab carrying Harry gets out of sight the back door of Jack’s car opens and Bill gets in. Jack asks what he wants and without saying anything pulls out a gun points it at him and shows him the picture of his family. Of course the bad guy responsible for Jack’s bad day is in his backseat and the movie kicks in from here. It would seem the baddies want Jack to help them rob the bank from the inside using wire transfers and if he does not cooperate they will kill his family.

That’s the plot and the story although very, VERY predictable is pretty well written. Firewall has some decent acting in it… from the main characters anyway. The technology scenes are not as ridiculously idiotic as the ones you have seen in other High-Tech thrillers like The Net and Swordfish; So, at the very least they treat the geeky audience members with some respect – Don’t get me wrong here, you will have to suspend disbelief a lot, you just won’t shake your head like you did with the others… you know who you are by the way. Last and most importantly of all, Harrison Ford gets to kick a little ass and smack fools which gives me hope for Indy 4. Harrison does look old as hell from time to time in this one, and you might half expect him to get sleepy and take a nap between scenes, but fear not my internet friends.

Ford is still Jack Ryan, Indiana Jones and Han Solo all rolled into one… it’s just packaged in an older box for this movie.