Leading Ladies: February 2006

Firewall

Stars: Harrison Ford, Paul Bettany, Virginia Madsen
Director: Richard Loncraine
Rating: PG-13

The lackluster reviews of the female critics aren't due to one of Hollywood's all-time hunkiest leading men being a tad too on-the-other-side-of-50 to be starring as an action hero ‑- in this case, a man who must help a tech-savvy thief in order to protect his family. They just think Ford's newest heroics play out in a movie that's all action-movie cliché and not enough actual action.

"Everything here is a known quantity except one question that could have been inspired by a Tootsie Roll Pop commercial: How many twists does it take to finally, at long last, get to the predictable ending?" says the Onion's Tasha Robinson.

The New York Times's Manohla Dargis says the movie "manages to entertain mildly only because it traffics in all the familiar action-movie clichés, giving moviegoers ample opportunity to test their action-movie IQ," and Slate's Dana Stevens writes, "One of the many disappointments of [the film] is how it squanders its own cast. Good character actors, including Robert Forster and Alan Arkin, are wasted ‑- literally, in some cases, as the body count piles up."

USA Today's Claudia Puig notes, "Firewall might be worth renting on an inclement weekend when the pickings are slim. It does have some tense moments ‑- even if some of the technical plot points don't quite scan. But, overall, it just feels like a rehash." And Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum says, the movie "is a witless entertainment, and a derivative one, too; it's everything listless about Hollywood in February, everything discardable about the genre in general."

Female consensus: Don't bother trying to get through this Firewall

next : The Pink Panther