‘Firewall’ plot too bad to be true

In theaters

FIREWALL, directed by Richard Loncraine, written by Joe Forte, 100 minutes, rated PG-13.

Imagine the situation.

You’re Jack Stanfield (Harrison Ford), a wealthy, Seattle-based network security chief for a national chain of banks. You couldn’t have it better.

Just look at his trimmings. Jack has a loving, accomplished wife in Beth (Virginia Madsen) and two typical kids in Sarah (Carly Schroeder) and Andy (Jimmy Bennett). He owns the swanky seaside estate that was used in the movie “Elektra” (not that Jack knows that), and he has a corner office that overlooks all of Seattle.

Pretty idyllic stuff. So, now imagine this: One day, as Jack, you’re posed with a rather troubling conundrum when into your life comes Bill Cox (Paul Bettany), a crook with nice suits and a swell English accent who wants you to rob your own bank and deposit $100 million into offshore accounts.

If you do so, your life and the lives of your recently kidnapped family, whose shrieking faces are captured on a cell phone camera and shown to you, will be spared. If you refuse, first your family will be murdered (messy), and then you (messier).

So, what do you do? Do you say to hell with the law and pilfer the money to protect your family, hoping you eventually will be vindicated and that, above all, your family will be safe? Or do you repeatedly put your family in harm’s way, risking their lives time and again because you’d rather protect the bank’s money instead?

If you’re thinking this is a no-brainer, well, that’s because for sane people, it is. In the real world that “Firewall” eschews, you likely would overcome the bank’s new security system – or its firewall, as it were – and send Bill packing with his money.

Thing is, Jack doesn’t do that. Jack continues to make decisions that literally almost cost his family their lives. What he does is incredible and indefensible. Watching the movie, which director Richard Loncraine based on a script by Joe Forte, you sit there thinking that either this guy is dumbstruck stupid, which isn’t a stretch given how he behaves, or he has a death wish for himself and his family.

Whatever the case, the choices he makes foul the film, sinking the suspension of disbelief required to enjoy it. No man who loves his family as much as we’re told that Jack loves his family would behave this way. It’s also no help to the movie that so much of it is driven by cliches and contrivances.

For instance, we learn early on that Jack’s son, Andy, is allergic to peanuts. What do you suppose the chances are that our little Andy is going to be fed just enough to make his eyes roll back in his head while he codes on the floor? We learn that the family’s dog, Rusty, has a dog collar that also serves as a GPS tracking device, presumably so the dog could be found should it get lost. That’s how rich these people are. What do you suppose the odds that that collar will prove critical toward the end?

About that ending – it’s a huffer and a puffer, with poor Harrison Ford looking oddly pale as he’s kicked, bludgeoned, slapped, scratched, punched and tossed out windows. Ford has been here before, but never in a movie that made him look so frail – and never, ever in a movie that actually allowed the sun to set so symbolically behind him in the climactic scene.

Grade: D

On video and DVD

DOOM, directed by Andrzej Bartzowiak, written by Dave Callaham and Wesley Strick, 104 minutes, rated R.

Andrzej Bartzowiak’s “Doom” is trash sci-fi that achieves a lean, focused center and final act that’s admirable in the tension it creates.

Set sometime in the distant future, the movie stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Sarge, a tattooed beast who is leading an elite core of Marines on a rescue mission to Mars. There, at an underground research facility led by geneticist Sam (Rosamund Pike), a mysterious 24th human chromosome has been discovered, studied and found to be wreaking havoc on what’s left of the planet’s residents.

The chromosome is akin to a virus. Should one come in contact with it, the results are monstrous.

Since the film has no interest in exploring the specifics of such a chromosome or how it came to manifest itself, onward it blasts, with Sarge’s crew rapidly dwindling as they rush through the metallic corridors with guns blazing, dialogue tanking, monsters lurking, pecs bouncing, people being slaughtered at every turn.

With the film’s genesis steeped in computer code, “Doom” predictably lacks soul, but it does generate the raw, sketchy rhythm of a B-movie, which gives it a few gross-out jolts. The film is designed for fans of the popular computer game on which it is based, who will dig the point-of-view perspective Bartzowiak creates toward the end (a direct nod to the game), and who likely will overlook the cheesy tough talk and lapses in logic in the wake of the many decapitations, severed body parts, spurting jugular veins and zombies busily littering the landscape, as zombies are wont to do.

Grade: C+

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays in Discovering, Fridays in Happening, and Weekends in Television. He may be reached at christopher@week

inrewind.com.