Passwort: Swordfish

I'm a fan of Hugh Jackman's, so I looked forward to seeing "Swordfish," which also stars another actor I like, John Travolta. The film was not produced with an eye to my demographic, so I did not like it as much as some people may have.

Travolta plays this incredibly ruthless man, someone committed to keeping the country safe from terrorists, who offers a hacker with child custody issues (Jackman) a chance to make a fortune, enabling him to hire a top attorney and get custody of his daughter. He needs the code cracked to a bank and account holding $9 billion in government money, and the money disseminated to various accounts.

The beginning of the film is fascinating - it's Travolta discussing the film Dog Day Afternoon - but alas, it's downhill from there. I'm normally not the most technically observant person when I'm watching a movie, but even I could tell that computerized images and miniatures did a lot of the work.

Hallie Berry gets to show off most of her beautiful body and there's plenty of action. Young men, I'm sure, love this film. Unfortunately I'm not a young man. And after seeing "Swordfish," I was 1 hour and 39 minutes older.

On paper the casting here looked enough to guarantee big box office returns. Even if John Travolta has come off the back of the biggest flop of his career with "Battlefield Earth" Hugh Jackman was following up his first stint as Wolverine in "X-Men" likewise Halle Berry was following up the same movie. While Don Cheadle was in the Oscar winning "Traffic", Vinnie Jones was in "Snatch" and the remake of "Gone in 60 Seconds". But for some reason it just doesn't come together.

Plot In A Paragraph: Gabriel Shear (John Travolta) is trying to access information that is locked inside a complicated computer system that contains mountains of government secrets - and money. With the help of his companion Ginger (Halle Berry) he hires Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman), a desperate computer expert, who is trying to stay clean to help him hack into the system.

I'll get what I dislike out of the way first. Halle Berry's much hyped first topless scene looks very forced, and looks to only be in the movie for publicity purposes. John Travolta gives an awful performance and following "The Punisher" the last movie I watched him in, this is another hint that "Pulp Fiction" was a fluke. Tate Donovan is an awful actor, but thank funny his role is small. I'm not sure why Vinnie Jones is here, as I don't recall him having any dialogue, except an awful bit at the end. Despite a short running time, the plot is drawn out, and seems to have too much going on at the same time.

Where the movie works is Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry. Jackman is a likable hero, both handsome and charismatic while also having the ability to actually act! Berry looks great and does as well as the material allows.

Could have been worse, but also it could have been a hell of a lot better.

Last night I watched swordfish for the third time. The first two times I thought of it as a good action film and would have easily given it 8/10. Now, a year later, I have seen more films and expect much more from them.

One problem with Swordfish is that that there isn't really enough action in it for an Action film and it isn't thrilling enough to be a thriller. The film opens with a bank robbery. We see a beautiful explosion in Bullet Time (it may look great, but it says The Matrix all over it). After that there's a short car chase and a poorly directed scene of people running/falling down a steep hill. Then we see that bank robbery from the beginning again, but this time the full-length thing and that's all the action I can remember.

Between the action sequences there is nothing very entertaining. The story starts off quite simple. A man with no money is hired to hack into some Bank. But then things become extremely complicated as we find out that the people who he is working with aren't who they say they are. Then we find out that maybe they are who they say they are and so on. By the end I don't really know or care anymore.

Most of the characters were pretty stereotypical. Hugh Jackman plays the same character he did in X-Men, but without the claws. Halle Berry plays the same character she did in Die Another Day, but this time she takes off her top and John Travolta plays the kind of bad guy who can't stop talking. So basically he's the same as he was in Battlefield Earth, but slightly more intelligent. Don Cheadle plays a rather friendly FBI agent and is probably the most interesting character.

The Music in the Film is quite interesting. It's not your usual action movie music that you don't even realize is there. It's different because of the choice of instruments that are used and it reminded me of the Computer game Mafia. Which, by the way, is a great game.

The color of this film is orange. Every scene set during the day has orange sunlight. It looks nice. But it's too much of a good thing and becomes irritating after a while.

Overall, I think this film deserves 6 or 7 out of 10. It gains points for the Bullet Time explosion even though it is unoriginal. But looses points for being too complicated and lacking entertainment between the major action scenes. It is not a must see. But watch it if it's on TV and you've nothing better to do.

I have revisited on a streamer,and although viewed the original, on video/dvd whatever, now more than two decades ago, found it strangely familiar to next generation movies of this decade.

Formulaic, but possibly this generation of Directors use it as a template but never quite match it.

The cast by today's standards are mostly still popular,and aged well and still working in the industry albeit probably financed by the far east and media mogul wannabees.

Fashions, modelwear, what goes around comes around and off or on, nothing has changed.

Certainly one of the better "veteran action" movie streamers, not as cheesy or dated as some which are charged at a premium.

When I first saw the previews for this movie, I thought, "Yeah, that looks cool, but... I really didn't like Gone in 60 Seconds." I didn't have the chance to see it in the theater, but I did buy the dvd. All I can say is, it was a good thing that I did! Unlike Gone in 60 Seconds,this movie is much more plot oriented. You need to pay attention to this movie to fully understand the plot. I really don't see how people can say that this plot is confusing. It makes sense as long as you watch and pay attention, just like all movies. Also, the action scenes are just incredible to watch, especially with the dvd that uses 5.1 sound. The ending and the villains motives will shock you! The movie will also cause you to contemplate many things once the movie has ended. By the way, Halle Berry looks amazing in the movie!

All in all this movie is just the epitome of cool, and it was definately one of the better action movies of 2001. Finally Travolta is back at what he does best. As a side note, this is a hell of a lot better then BATTLEFIELD EARTH,which by the way was not as bad as everyone said it was. I really think that you should see this, I don't think that you will be dissapointed.

9/10 Great.