Harrison Ford sings a low and thoughtful rendition of “Happy Birthday” upon request, calm and collected despite having not been asked a single question about his new film Firewall in the course of the audience Q’A that follows a late January screening of the film. He has been on a long hiatus since 2003’s Hollywood Homicide, but with Firewall, Ford returns to familiar territory: the suspense thriller.
Audiences will surely flock to see Ford back in hero-mode in Firewall, in which he plays a security chief at a Seattle bank whose family is kidnapped by a bank robber (Paul Bettany), who holds the family hostage for Ford’s help in cracking the bank’s safe. It is once again up to Ford to save his character’s family and foil the bad guys’ plan, alá Air Force One.
Fortunately, there’s a follow-up to the Q’A debacle — which was full of birthday wishes and Indiana Jones internship requests — in which Ford expresses his real passions.
Ford is shorter than would be expected for an action star, sporting a spiky goatee and a gold earring, but his presence is instantly warm and accessible. At moments he seems shy and uncomfortable as he looks across the table with the lopsided Han Solo-ish grin. At other times, he is fiery and elated with the forthrightness of Indiana Jones. Conversation quickly turns to the current state of Hollywood, and the relationship between the commercial and creative sides of film making.
Is there a need to integrate a message? “There is room for both,” Ford muses, leaving it at that. He discusses how extremely rare it is for a film to capture its message properly, and cites the recent Good Night, and Good Luck and the classic To Kill a Mockingbird as examples. The public needs those pictures, he expounds, “to bump up against the barriers.”
Although Ford clearly wishes to keep the focus on Firewall, the movie he is, after all, traveling cross-country to promote, discussion of the fourth Indiana Jones installment inevitably pops up, and his eyes light up, but the most he says is that he hopes filming will begin this summer with Steven Spielberg at the helm.
Ford is far more talkative about other, more nebulous film projects, about which he says “for the first time I really am working and developing projects a lot more. So, there really are a bunch of things that I think are seeing their way through.”
While he may not have said much about Firewall, he does speak fervently about the promotion of biodiversity and the necessity of leading corporations toward the best practices for the environment, and speaks readily on the subject.
“Going to a war zone and coming out with your ass intact,” he says. “That for me is the reward of good hard work.”
Almost as rewarding as foiling the bad guys’ plan.