Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001)

I have always had a weak spot for high-tech action films. Despite it being on television often I’ve never seen Swordfish before. About time for a viewing with at least some expectations, especially regarding the cast (Travolta, Jackman, Cheadle). I was in for a disappointment, a big disappointment.

The movie has a great start. We see how John Travolta is giving a monologue about Sidney Lumets Dog Day Afternoon. He turns out to be in the middle of a hostage situation as the main villain and in control of course. What follows next is perhaps one of the most beautiful explosion scenes I have ever seen. The whole scene is a flash forward and as a viewer you’re expecting the history and preparation for this situation in detail. Unfortunately the movie gets rather messy after this brilliant opening. Errr, extremely messy.

Travolta is Gabriel Shear, a big shot criminal working under an American senator who wants to get his hands on dirty money from the government (known as operation Swordfish under the DEA). For this job he needs a brilliant hacker. Since the best hacker in the world was caught at the border and assassinated (by Travolta his own men) he needs the second best, the good-hearted Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman). Jobson needs a lot of money to hire a lawyer to get visitation rights to see his daughter. Shear offers him ten million to crack a bunch of codes and algorithms and Jobson instantly believes that that’s all.

Alright, so to be blunt: this movie sucks. I cannot think of many positive elements except the opening. The storylines are unrealistic, unmotivated and don’t create the desired suspense. In between Travolta and Jackman is the beautiful Halle Berry (this movie is probably best known for her totally unnecessary nude scene topping her salary with half a million). Her role is to be both a potential love-interest and a snitch (or not?). Well, let me tell you, both roles don’t work, at all. I simply didn’t care about her and what might happen to her. Secondly, the whole computer hacking part of the movie makes no sense and makes that you lose interest in the objective. When Travolta out of the blue starts shooting in the streets from his car you know that the film went downhill and cannot be saved by anything.

The final twenty minutes is where this film really becomes a nightmare. All logic and suspense go overboard. We go back to the beginning in the bank, where everyone involved turns out to be a retard. What follows are 23451 plot twists, not one of them making sense if you ask me. Perhaps I am missing something, but this is simply a horrible film. Its screenplay comes from the mind of Skip Woods (well, let his first name be a warning) who also wrote Hitman (I believe I fell asleep during this film!). The Imdb tells us that he wrote the script for the 5^th Die Hard, I am already disappointed…

2/10

P.S. : For the nerds: the two hackers in this film are named Stanley Jobson and Axl Torvalds.