If Willie Sutton had been born a half-century later and asked why he robbed banks, do you think he would have said, "Because that's where the computer servers are"?

		"Firewall" Rating: PG-13 for some intense sequences of violence. Starring: Harrison Ford, Paul Bettany. Director: Richard Loncraine. Post-Gazette Family Film Guide review of "Firewall" "Firewall" Web site

Doesn't have the same ring as, "Because that's where the money is," now does it? And movies about criminals who bloodlessly steal millions by wire transfers tend not to be as suspenseful or visually exciting as the ones where the robbers have to blow the vault and load bricks of Benjamins or gold into satchels and haul them out to the getaway car.

The thriller "Firewall" is set in the computer age, which means it turns Harrison Ford into a MacGyver whose bag of tricks might include an iPod rather than a paperclip and a candy bar as he tries to beat the very computer security system he devised. His Jack Stanfield specializes in keeping his Seattle bank free from hackers and other modern-day threats. His bank is merging with an out-of-town behemoth, but that proves to be the least of his problems.

Jack has been under secret surveillance and, shortly after the story opens, learns his family is being held prisoner in their expensive, oceanfront home by a gang of crooks who want Jack to steal $100 million for them. The mastermind is a cool customer named Bill Cox (Paul Bettany), who can be both brutal and oddly benevolent.

He seems to have everything figured out, wiring Jack for sound and video so he cannot alert the police. At stake are the lives of Jack's wife (Virginia Madsen), 14-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son.

"Firewall" follows Jack as he complies with Cox's wishes and tries to fight back, with the tools, skills and people at his disposal.

Ford may be 63, but we still think of him as Han Solo, Indiana Jones, CIA hero Jack Ryan or the president of the United States in "Air Force One." In other words, he usually plays the most powerful person in the room, and it's strange to see him quivering with anger and helplessness and ready to implode.

For much of the movie, Bettany is the most commanding person in the room and the blond Brit physically towers over Ford and seems to have put on some weight, in every sense, since "Wimbledon" and "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," in which he played the ship's doctor and confidant to Russell Crowe's captain.

He's quite good as a villain, but he and Ford are trapped in a thriller that shoots itself in the foot with logical lapses. Poor Madsen, an Oscar nominee for "Sideways," is just trapped as the wife who also happens to be an architect. Other fine actors, such as Robert Forster, Robert Patrick and Alan Arkin, are underused.

Directed by Richard Loncraine and written by Joe Forte (this is his first produced film), "Firewall" stages a conversation for Jack's benefit -- without any acknowledgment that the participants know he is eavesdropping -- and turns on a detail that is comically ludicrous.

The illogical linchpin is the sort of thing that had people at a preview turning to each other as the end credits rolled to say, "Why would they ..." And why the criminals wear gloves but make no effort to hide their faces is never explained, either.

The amount of cash available in a bank today probably is insignificant compared with the holdings accessible by computer, and it turns out that Willie Sutton may not have said his most famous line but was happy to claim it. Neither mitigates the fact that it rains nearly constantly in "Firewall," and the story springs a few leaks, too.