Firewall is a 2006 American action/thriller film directed by Richard Loncraine and written by Joe Forte. Harrison Ford stars as Jack Stanfield, a security expert at a bank faced with a corporate merger and the offer of a new job. Yet the stranger with a job offer is playing a much more sinister game.
Filmed for $60 million, it grossed $82,751,189 worldwide, including $48,751,189 in the United States and $34,000,000 in foreign grosses.
The film was originally called The Wrong Element. It was allegedly changed after actor Kett Turton kept mockingly referring to it as 'The Long Elephant'.
Although set in Seattle, the movie was filmed in Vancouver.
Richard Loncraine replaced the original director (Mark Pellington) on a recommendation from Paul Bettany, who had already been cast and had starred in Loncraine's film Wimbledon.
The scene in a church was filmed at Fraserview M.B. Church
The plot is similar to that of Demond Lowden's novel Bellman and True, the film version of which was directed by Firewall 's Richard Loncraine. Lowden's novel was also the basis for the Kim Basinger/Val Kilmer heist movie The Real McCoy.
The plot line is similar to a real life robbery (the Securitas depot robbery) that occurred in Southern England on 22 February 2006, twelve days after the movie's release in the USA. The raid was the biggest to date in the history of English crime as armed thieves abducted and threatened the manager (and his family) of a cash storage depot for the Bank of England in order to gain access to over £53 million (approximately US$92.6 million).
During one scene, the show on in the background that the kids are watching is an episode of ReBoot. During another scene, an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants ("Squirrel Jokes") is clearly audible. The horror film Ghost Ship also appears twice in the background on TVs.
This is Harrison Ford's first movie in almost three years, the last being Hollywood Homicide in 2003. The hiatus between Hollywood Homicide and Firewall was the longest of his career.
In one sequence in the film, Harrison Ford's character is driving a car to find his family, but in a brief wide-angle shot you can see his secretary Janet driving the car. This is a flaw that came about because they had already shot the sequence with Janet driving, went back and re-did it, and yet one of the shots taken before the change made it into the final cut.
Equifax, the credit agency, was a special consultant for the film's crew.
Harrison Ford's character's house is the same one used in Battlestar Galactica for James Callis (Gaius Baltar), both shot in Vancouver, B.C.
In 2006, Michael J. Nelson and Kevin Murphy of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame released a humorous audio commentary for the film on their RiffTrax service.
There are numerous hidden references to Dilbert. Ratbert's voice is heard on the TV screen early in the film, and when Ford exits the car to bribe the kidnapper with money, Dilbert's reflection can be seen on the windshield. The chef who is cutting the tomato appears to be the Pointy Haired Boss's character's voice actor.Wikipedia
