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Review Archive
FILMS
Swordfish (2001)Gabriel Shear (Travolta) is a badass. We know this because the movie tell us he is. That's what the script says, so that's what we know. Also, according to the script, he's rich and powerful and no one has ever seen his face before. Apparently he's like Bill Gates, but more violent and sexually active. So he must be a badass. He wants to steal an obscene amount of money from some secret government bank account but he needs a computer expert to pull it off. So, enter ...
Stanley Jobson (Jackman) is the hacker with a heart of gold. We know this because the film tells us (see a pattern developing here?) that he's just spent two years in jail and if he so much as touches a computer he goes back in the pokey. Wow, he must be really dangerous. No solitaire or Free Cell for you, Stanley. Oh yeah, he also really misses his daughter because (yet again) they tell us he does. His little girl is currently in the custody of his coke-sniffing, porn-starring ex-wife. Can you feel the manipulation yet? Anyway, his daughter isn't so much an actual character as she (or "it") is a transparent plot device that Shear can bring up every time Jobson resists enticement by saying "it's illegal" or "why should I help you?" or "no way I'm doing that!" (By the way, how many hackers have you met who look like Hugh Jackman?)
And last, but certainly not least, is Ginger (Berry). She may or may not be telling the truth about anything (because the film doesn't tell us) and she may or may not know what's really going on. Is she bait or is she a possible victim? Who knows? But let's be honest here: who cares? You get to see her hooters halfway into the movie—which is worth the price of admission. We know that she's topless, because the movie shows us. Hurrah!
However, Swordfish is a 99-minute film, and those 15 glorious, nipple-riffic seconds are the only enjoyable moments in it. Now, what to do about the other 98 minutes and 45 seconds? It's not that the rest is horrible, it's just terribly flawed and, for an action movie, both boring and absurd.
There are inherent problems built into any action movie about a computer hacker, in that, it's just not that exciting to watch someone type code at a computer terminal. Pretty much any other occupation, and I do mean any other, could be inserted into the action genre and it'd be more interesting than this one.
For example, how about this: rogue ballet dancers pirouetting all over the F.B.I. as they prance state to state robbing banks. That's got some action to it. Or this: A government conspiracy involving covert plumbers and how they need to recover $1.2 billion in the waterworks of the Empire State Building. That's got plenty of pipe-hitting action and men-with-toolbelts-crawling-through-airducts fun. You can make almost any career into an action movie, except typing.
It's not that I have a problem with computer movies or hacking movies, The Matrix did a wonderful job—it's one of my favorites, but when a film tries to be an action movie about hacking, well, it has a tendency to get boring. I'm not saying that it's impossible to make an action/hacker movie—I'm sure there are some out there, it's just that this one fails pretty hard.
But don't blame the actors (it's not that Travolta or Jackman or Berry's breasts do a bad job with their parts) it's just not exciting to watch someone type on a keyboard while lines of gibberish code scroll by and the character makes faces (both angry and happy, so we know how the coding is progressing) and saying things like, "come on, come on" and "almost...there..." and "I'm going to sneak in the back door, drop the firewall, insert the worm, and bam, we're millionaires." It just doesn't make for good viewing. Once or twice to get the idea may be fine, but over and over? OK. He's a hacker. We get it. You've told us a thousands times already. We don't need a five-minute montage of Jackman typing and drinking wine and looking upset and trying to get the digital blobs on his monitor to line up with the digital cube's corners. That doesn't mean anything to us and the time could be better spent elsewhere in the film.
(And as an aside to the director, if you're going to have a close-up shot of someone typing, make sure his fingers are actually typing something and not just banging away on the keyboard, hitting five and six keys at a time. I don't care how good of a hacker he's supposed to be—you hit six keys at once and you're typing garbage. Also, Hollywood, and this film in particular, has a tendency to equate flat-panel monitors with "super-high-tech" capabilities. They're not that sophisticated. They're just flat. In fact, they're not even that expensive anymore—and when I see them in movies, they're just not impressing me. Quite the opposite, in fact. So stop it, or I'll throw my bulky, 21-incher at you!)
To be fair, though, perhaps I'm being to hard on this film. Critically, I didn't like it. That much is obvious. I wouldn't recommend unless you're already bored—but I enjoyed it on an evening when I had nothing better to do. Aside from Halle Berry's mammary moment of fame, there is one other exciting scene and that's the beginning. After Travolta gives his speech about Dog Day Afternoon (which, by the way, has a strong, bad taste of ripped-off Tarantino-esque dialogue) there's a few moments of coolness. Things go wrong and there are explosions and a really beautiful bullet-time shot of a human shotgun exploding 20 pounds of ball bearings in the middle of a city block. Very cool if you have surround sound. Immediately after the film cuts to a flashback which will led up to all of this excitement. Great. Downshift and prepare to yawn.
(Fair spoiler warning: Stop reading if you don't want to know the "surprise" ass-covered ending.) I rented this one on DVD and watched some of special features which involve interviews with various behind-the-scenes guys. One of the guys is describing how difficult the ending of the film was to do because it involved coordinating with the LAPD and cordoning off entire sections of downtown Los Angeles. Basically a big helicopter picks up the getaway bus, and carries it off.
Lame, lame, lame.
"It's never been done before," says one of the behind-the-scenes dumbasses. Exactly! Because it's lame. Apparently it required lots of people and lots of time to pull off these intricate shots and CGI effects, etc., etc. If I were them, I just would've put all of that time and money into a better script with a really good, expensive car chase. Or better yet, pay Halle Berry extra cash to flash the cops, and while they're distracted by her hooters, the bad guys get away.
I wouldn't recommend this movie unless you really like the actors, you have no better plans and feel like vegging out on the couch for an hour and a half, or you have a kick-ass pause button and want to leave Ms. Berry on the screen while you do chores around the house.
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