Harrison Ford in Firewall

[don]

Well it was only a matter of time before the identity theft headlines from CNN and the Chicago Tribune (gotta plug my favorite hometown rag) made it's way to Hollywood. From what I've read, the critics give it below average for being formulaic, but it's predictability means that at least it will be decent entertainment being a Harrison Ford movie. For that reason, non-critics are giving it an above average 'B'. As for the technical content, I'd be interested to hear from those who have actually seen it. Firewall opens today.

Official Site:
http://www.firewallmovie.com/

Movies.com Page:
http://movies.go.com/movies/movie?name=firewall_2005&genre=action&studio=Warner%20Brothers

Don

[tmartin]

Haven't seen it, but the security consultant who reviewed the script was interviewed, and while he suggested several changes, which were made, he said it was "a great movie" that pushed the security boundaries a bit.

No wonder people have such a poor understanding of security.

I don't think a movie that was true to life would be boring...

[Oyle]

Yeah, I haven't seen it yet, but I want to. I have two free tickets to a firstrun movie theather, that until recently, only had theaters on the other side of town from me, so it was inconvienent to go to one of those. But now  a mall that used to be a Loews now converted management, so I can go to that one. Much closer to home. I'm just waiting for it to be out long enough now so that they take free passes for it. I want to see how many mistakes they make with it.
Anyone remember watching "The Net", with Sandra Bullock? That one made me laugh most; she's at a computer that has 345 as the 3rd octet in an IP address. It was only on screen for a second. Ya gotta be observant......

 

[don]

I hate to disagree, but changing the octet of IP addresses is the same thing as having 555 in movie phone numbers. Movies used to have regular numbers, but the 'real' owner of the number was inundated by fans. The same thing would happen in the networked world if all octets were between 0 and 255. So in a flip, doesn't that actually indicate knowledge?

My $.02,
Don

[Dengar13]

I hate to disagree, but changing the octet of IP addresses is the same thing as having 555 in movie phone numbers. Movies used to have regular numbers, but the 'real' owner of the number was inundated by fans. The same thing would happen in the networked world if all octets were between 0 and 255. So in a flip, doesn't that actually indicate knowledge?

My $.02,
Don

Why not use private IP's then?  I can't remember if she was inside or outside of the network in that movie.  i liked that movie and thought all the GUI's were funny.

[Oyle]

I finally went and saw Firewall Friday Night, 2-24-06. I had free tickets for a local AMC Theatres, and a local Loews theatre just converted to AMC. They still had the Loews signs up.

Anyway, it was pretty enjoyable, but it wasn't as techie as I expected. It mostly was towards the action side, with Harrison working to rescue his family. I didn't really see anything wrong with tech side, EXCEPT that Harrison  took a picture of a computer screen readout with a Treo-style cellphone (Does a Treo take pictures? I can't afford one, so I don't know?), and then he goes to it later to recall the data, and apparently through a USB connection, he synchronizes the Treo's output onto a computer screen. But when he took the picture of the screen with the Treo, he captured a reflection of himself on the monitor in the picture captured by the Treo. When he recalls the picture later, the reflection is gone. It takes alot of assumptions; you have to assume that the accompanying software for the Treo, etc., and all the other little goodies is already installed.

All I know is, I can't boot up my Inspiron and immediately go into a browser to get online; I have to wait until Windows loads, and Macafee Virsuscan Enterprise loads, etc. Granted, Harrison was using his secretaies' laptop, and he probably went into Hibernation in the meantime, but I usually have to wait a little bit. Good ol' Hollywood, they always get something wrong.   


One other scene: he pulls the car under the bridge and pulls out his former secretaries' laptop (he was forced to fire her by the bad guy; he gave her her job back later) which I assumed is Blackberry enabled and gets on the web. If that laptop was not a Blackberry, no WAY he could park under a bridge and find an access point from somewhere. I figure it HAD to be a Blackberry, but there was no mention of it. Of course, with what's going on now with RIM and NTP,they may not have gotten permission to use the name. Who knows? 

Other than those two points, I didn't see anything wrong. No outrageously wrong IP address like Sandra in "The Net".
It was OK for a techie movie, but you can't really call it a techie movie, it's more like an action-suspense thriller. Harrison's gotten old, too.

I give it a 7 out of 10, but, don't throw away your VHS of Matthew and "WarGames".