ID theft, the sequel

Hollywood takes another hack at genre in 'Firewall.'

Harrison Ford is ticked off again. But not because the bad guys have hijacked Air Force One or kidnapped his wife from a Paris hotel room; this time they've swiped his identity to break into the bank where he works and steal millions of dollars.

Warner Bros. Pictures on Feb. 10 will release "Firewall," the latest film to focus on an issue that over the past year has come front and center in the public's consciousness - identity theft. Playing off everyone's fear of having a credit card number stolen, "Firewall" takes it to the extreme, pitting good corporate citizen Jack Stanfield (Ford) against a technology-laden thief with a British accent, and forcing Stanfield to take near superhero measures to save his security executive job as well as his family, who are taken hostage.

Identity theft doesn't seem as sexy a topic as the espionage and adultery that Hollywood tends to churn out, but there does seem to be an ongoing flirtation between big movie companies and technology.

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Harrison Ford is ticked off again. But not because the bad guys have hijacked Air Force One or kidnapped his wife from a Paris hotel room; this time they've swiped his identity to break into the bank where he works and steal millions of dollars.

Warner Bros. Pictures on Feb. 10 will release "Firewall," the latest film to focus on an issue that over the past year has come front and center in the public's consciousness - identity theft. Playing off everyone's fear of having a credit card number stolen, "Firewall" takes it to the extreme, pitting good corporate citizen Jack Stanfield (Ford) against a technology-laden thief with a British accent, and forcing Stanfield to take near superhero measures to save his security executive job as well as his family, who are taken hostage.

Identity theft doesn't seem as sexy a topic as the espionage and adultery that Hollywood tends to churn out, but there does seem to be an ongoing flirtation between big movie companies and technology.

"Every once in a while you'll see a movie that tries to talk about the state of the art of technology and point out the flaws," says Todd Dagres, general partner with Spark Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in companies that combine technology and entertainment, as well as the founder of two film and TV production companies. "Hollywood loves the downside - 'You think you're protected, but you're not' - and how technology can turn against you."

Yet Dagres points out that Warner Bros. Pictures must have realized the storyline alone might not be enough draw for the average moviegoer. "You've got to have Harrison Ford in there running frantically around and turning the tables on the bad guys" to pack the theaters, he says.

Though "Firewall" is being released when news headlines about identity theft abound, it's not the first to focus on the issue. Perhaps its most notable predecessor was the 1995 release "The Net," in which Sandra Bullock plays a software engineer whose identity was deleted and replaced by one attached to a criminal record.

Using a computer to erase someone's existence was so farfetched in 1995 it seemed like something that could happen only in a movie, but that's perhaps not so today.

"I do think it's appropriate for people to be concerned about identity theft, therefore it's not surprising that it has become a topic of interest," says Laura Yecies, a general manager at firewall maker Check Point. "One of our biggest efforts has been to really educate consumers about the importance of taking the security of the Internet and their computers seriously."

It's also nice for Check Point that Hollywood named a mainstream movie after a highly technical product that the company is closely associated with. "We think it's kind of cool that this thing we work on day-to-day is really relevant to everyday people," Yecies says.

Check Point is planning company outings to see the movie and will host some sessions analyzing the film to separate the technically possible from the Hollywood hype. "We've come up with some cute ideas," of ways the company can have fun with the film, she says.