Sometimes you've got to love the Dream Factory. Why? Because it's the only factory that could've produced a movie like Firewall. Here's your standard action thriller with all the known ingredients -- a big name star (Harrison Ford) playing a guy whose loving family is held hostage, a sophisticated lead villain (Paul Bettany) and his assortment of murderous henchmen, an elaborate scheme involving much techno-jabberwocky and the infiltration of big banks, and the steady build-up to Payback (yes, with a capital "P").

We're all familiar with this -- the question now is what to really expect. A good movie that flexes the genre? A bad movie so lifeless you'll fall asleep before the climax? Or the old standby favorite -- the movie that's "so bad it's good"? I think we have a winner in the last category with Firewall. It's the kind of movie that wears its cliches like bright flowers on a Hawaiian shirt.

This film is truly a refugee from the '80s, when we were high on good old-fashioned revenge. Back then, we could count on one thing for certain -- if the villains messed with our loved ones, they would eventually get their body parts handed back  with a clever quip to top it off. Ah, the days when Arnold Schwarzenegger would take out an entire army to save his daughter. And then Die Hard came along to show us how it was supposed to be done, and all the righteous action thrillers afterwards could only try to photocopy that success. These movies seemed to peter out after a while, but Firewall must've locked itself in a time capsule, waiting until now to emerge.

Still, maybe that isn't the right way to look at this film, since it features an older Ford along with lots of modern high-techiness -- camera cell phones, iPods, internet, and the stretchiest, most imaginative use of GPS in a movie plot ever (oddly, the only thing it's missing is, well, a firewall). It's actually an '80s movie dressed up in new clothes. And this might've worked if Firewall wasn't so content with its own restrictive predictability, which shows in the actors -- actors I love like Ford and Bettany, no less -- so how disheartening to see them both go through the motions here. Bettany should make a great villain, but he's given no room to exercise his charms. And Ford spends more time scowling painfully in Firewall  than Gary Cooper does in High Noon.

The movie takes too much of its time revving up to its anticipated finale, but when it gets there, Ford growls as he demands his family's safety, the overactive musical score goes into hyperdrive, and we get an explosion, bullets, blood, and the old reliable hand-to-hand combat. It's all rather hysterical, frankly. However, while no one should go into Firewall expecting a good movie, that doesn't mean we're prevented from squeezing out a good time anyway. 

(Released by Warner Bros. and rated "PG-13" for some intense sequences of violence.)

Review also posted on www.windowtothemovies.com.