Goon-2

I watched "The Pink Panther" when I was young, but had almost forgotten about it until my sister lent me her DVD of this special...and special it was. The entire story was about the homeless Pink Panther (was this made before or after he was an Olympic skier?) wanting just to eat and getting thwarted along the way. It's a sad story and I very much "felt" for the Pink Panther along the way (an old woman compassionate enough to feed birds couldn't recognize that the Panther was hungry? The man angry about the snow on his steps couldn't have hired The Pink Panther to shovel his steps?)there were many wonderful moments of (well done) slapstick humor that kept the story from becoming depressing. The ending was wonderful and even the singing children didn't completely distract.

Wonderfully moving, "A Pink Christmas" sends an unexpectedly powerful message about hunger and poverty and the lengths somebody will go to to provide for himself. It more than exceeded my expectations and I will make a point to watch it every Christmas.

Harrison Ford appears in this movie as the same type of "family man in duress" character he's played in... a lot of other movies. I never thought he was all that diverse. If you can't play a whole range of roles, pick one and do it well. He's perfectly inoffensive in this movie and I actually liked this character more than the ... similar ones he has played.

Speaking of similar characters, there's "Chloe from 24" playing... er, Chloe from '24' only her name is Janet and her 'assistant to a man named Jack' job is not as impressive. I haven't seen Mary Lynn Rajskab enough to know the extent of her range, but if she can play little more than Chloe O'Brien (that's basically what this character is), she does it well.

The rest of the performances run more along the course of average. Virginia Madsen as the generic wife-in-peril is generically 'fine.' She somewhat resembles "Audrey Ranes" from "24" in the promo pictures and to be honest, Kim Raver could have played the role without a hint of difference... Paul Bettany was also 'fine' as the villain. As Paul Bettany seems to be in every other movie that is released, I ... expected more... It could be that I found his character rather one-dimensional and stupid, but still... What I noticed the most about Paul Bettany is that he looks like Anthony Michael Hall meets my mental picture of what Nicolae Carpathia, the anti Christ in the "Left Behind" series would look like. To be honest, they could have cast Anthony Michael Hall as the villain, and like the wife... their probably wouldn't have been a difference (and this doesn't exactly leave me wanting Paul Bettany as Carpathia should they ever do a movie version of "Left Behind" that would be more to the authors' liking...) ANYWAY, so the not multi-dimensional characters take us through the not exactly groundbreaking plot of Jack (Stanfield, not Bauer...) and Chloe... I mean Janet, having to save... not the world, but Jack's family from aspiring bank robbers who have kidnapped Jack's family because they would like Jack to rob the bank for them. The bank robber, whose name for some reason morphs from William Rayburn to William Cox and his rather useless gang of accomplices (who really serve as little more than babysitters) essentially move into the Stanfield house (which in usual movie fashion is about ten times the size of regular family home, as though "Hollywood people" think that because they live in mansions, everybody else must live in mansions) and ... more-or-less leave the family alone save for the fact that nobody but Jack can leave the house. I live in Washington and one of my 'gripes' is that people seem a little too wrapped up in their own business. "Firewall" is a good testament to this: absolutely none of the Stanfield's neighbors seem to notice or care about all of the extra guests, the lack of action from the Stanfield's house, gunfire... etc..

Anyway, Jack of course refuses at first... until villain Bill 'baits' him into helping, but of course there's no way Jack would just help without some catch... some way to make things right and keep his family safe in the process.

I won't bother with spoilers, it's not that hard to figure out what happens. It's certainly not the movie to watch for anybody looking for something new... or really unique performances. Jack and "Chloe" are entertaining together (Harrison Ford and Kiefer Sutherland are extremely comparable as actors and Kiefer Sutherland is another who could have played this Jack just as well as Harrison Ford) and while the movie definitely seemed longer than it's running time, I wouldn't say it lulled me to sleep.

If all else, it's 'fun' to watch "Firewall" to see how many other actors could play these roles.