Swordfish Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)August 6th, 2001
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Whatever happened to the good old days when John Travolta would make a couple of really bad pictures and then stage a big career "comeback" with something like Look Who's Talking? Since he blasted his way back on top with 1994's Pulp Fiction, Travolta hasn't come close to getting the Hollywood bitch-slap off of the $20 million-per-film scrap heap that he so richly deserves. C'mon - were Two of a Kind and Staying Alive really any worse than Mad City and Lucky Numbers? We're talking about a guy with seven Razzie nominations as compared to his two Oscar nods. And let's not even get started on the whole Battlefield Earth thing, girlfriend.
All of which makes Swordfish's opening scene even more curious. Travolta, playing yet another bad guy role (he hasn't worn the white hat since A Civil Action.sort of), delivers a bizarre monologue directly into the camera, declaring that Hollywood makes shitty, unimaginative films, before picking apart the realism of the ending of Dog Day Afternoon (thusly telegraphing the end of this film). His character, Gabriel Shear, is a high-tech terrorist who needs only a world-class computer hacker to pull off a $9.5 billion raid of a secret government account to carry out his dastardly deeds (which he does to defend the honor of his country, natch).
After the strange soliloquy, Swordfish kicks off with a bang...literally. Shear and his band of miscreants are in the midst of a bank robbery, with dozens of hostages wired to the hilt with explosives rigged to blow if they leave the perimeter of the bank. The feds either don't know, don't care, or don't believe Shear, inadvertently dragging one hostage to a loud, grisly death that takes out several vehicles, storefronts and military personnel. It's a terrific scene, and it turns out to be the end of the film. The rest is told during an hour-long flashback through the eyes of Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman, Someone Like You).
Jobson, we learn, is the world's former #1 computer hacker who has just been paroled after a two-year stint at Leavenworth under the condition that he never touch another computer again for the rest of his life. The bust, which involved a virus that disabled the government's ability to read our personal e-mail messages, left Jobson's marriage in shambles and, even worse, finds his young daughter (Camryn Grimes, The Young and the Restless) calling the Porn King of Southern California "Daddy." He's living with a ratty dog in an even rattier trailer on a Midland, Texas oilfield when the comely Ginger (Jackman's X-Men co-star Halle Berry) shows up, sticks a wad of cash under his nose, and leads him back to Los Angeles to meet with her boss, Shear.
After a strange job interview that involves cracking the Defense Department's computer system while getting a blow job and having a gun jammed into his temple, Jobson decides to stick around long enough to make a wad of cash in hopes of winning legal custody of his daughter with the money. Now, I personally guarantee the world's top two hackers look more like the Comic Book Store Guy from The Simpsons than Hugh Jackman (or Bedazzled's Rudolf Martin, who plays another dreamboat computer geek). Is anybody buying this crap?
Shear and his crew are being chased by an FBI agent, played by Don Cheadle (in somewhat of a reprisal of his Traffic role). He's the same guy who busted Stanley the first time around, too. There is, of course, a whole lot of computer hokum (and the inevitable exciting hacking scene - always a cinematic thrill), as well as a laughable scene where Stanley jumps off a cliff and rolls for about 15 minutes. In real life, he'd be in frigging China. There's also a shocking bit at the end where one of the country's top black actresses gets lynched (oh my God, somebody get Spike Lee on the phone...pronto!). And there's plenty of confusion about who is working for whom, but the whole thing boils down to one secret government agency battling other secret government agencies.
Swordfish was directed by Dominic Sena (Gone in 60 Seconds), and while it's a stylish enough picture (thanks to cinematographer Paul Cameron), it has the misfortune of being written by Skip Woods. Woods wrote and directed a horrendous film called Thursday (when it played at the Toronto International Film Festival, critic Roger Ebert belittled Woods during a post-screening Q&A session) and hasn't shown much growth in his talent since then. Swordfish certainly isn't a bad film; it's the kind of loud, testosterone-driven (Berry got paid $500,000 per boob to show 'em) stuff that fuels the summer box office with its mediocrity.
1:39 - R for violence, language and some sexuality/nudity
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