By Dan Dunn
Special to the Daily Press

The movie: Firewall
The director: Richard Loncraine
The stars: Harrison Ford, Virginia Madsen, Paul Bettany

From Han Solo to Indiana Jones to Jack Ryan, Harrison Ford has portrayed so many memorable men of action over the years that it seems almost blasphemous to suggest that the legendary star is too old to be believable as the butt-kicking scourge of celluloid evildoers. But watching the gray-haired and wrinkled 63-year-old actor’s futile efforts to defy Father Time in the lame thriller “Firewall” left little doubt in this Ford fan’s mind that it’s high time he hang up his Herbert Johnson fedora (aka the “Indiana Jones hat”) along with any and all other accouterments of the younger man’s genre. And even if Ford were still in his physical prime, there’s little he could have done to rescue this movie, which is done in early on by logical inconsistencies before being buried by a ridiculous ending.

Ford’s Jack Stanfield is the head of security for Seattle-based Landrock Pacific Bank. He’s got a beautiful wife (Virginia Madsen, who is 20 years younger than her leading man), two cute kids, and a stunning oceanfront abode of the sort often featured on the covers of architecture magazines. Unbeknownst to Jack, for the better part of a year he and his family have been monitored by a band of high-tech criminals headed by standard-issue Euro-baddie Bill Cox (Paul Bettany, who’s too fey to be fearsome). Cox and his cohorts have uncovered everything there is to know about the Stanfields, and plan to use the information and plenty of firepower to compel Jack to assist them in stealing $100 million from Landrock Pacific.

Somehow, though, the crooks overlooked an important development — due to a recent merger, Jack no longer has electronic access to the bank accounts Cox hoped to pillage. Oops! With his family held hostage, Jack is forced to improvise, eventually hatching an implausible plot to siphon funds into offshore accounts using his daughter’s iPod, a fax machine scan bar and some Scotch tape. And that’s not even the silliest plot device employed by director Richard Loncraine (“Wimbledon”) and tyro scribe Joe Forte. The third act is riddled with head-scratching developments involving space-age dog collars and unlimited WiFi Internet access, as our mild-mannered septuagenarian hero miraculously morphs into a cranky cross between MacGyver and one of those techno-whizzes from “24.” It’s all about as entertaining as a computer virus.

(Rated PG-13. Running time: 100 minutes)