The Hummingbird Project

Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard are entrepreneurs who undertake an audacious venture to deliver a fiber optic cable from Kansas to the New York Stock Exchange that is faster than all the other portals by just enough to make a staggering difference in market returns. In choosing to take this gamble, they wind up using valuable information obtained from working for their former boss (an effectively domineering Salma Hayek) whom they now find is their competition.

Although this is a well-acted film, its momentum is a bit erratic. The storyline never loses its energy but the plot sometimes takes peculiar detours. This ambitious enterprise is fraught with the emotional imbalance of its two dissimilar protagonists, one a highly calculating salesman (Eisenberg) and the other a neurotic computer wiz (Skarsgard). We discover that each one has motivations of his own. As considerable opposites, they keep the film's dynamic engaging.

Some of the film's best moments are when these two aspiring masters of the universe find the core principles behind their work being challenged by the citizenry they cross paths with. The film takes a mild-mannered look at the ethics of the project but mostly lets the audience judge for itself. Recommended as workmanlike filmmaking on obscure but compelling material.

Writer/director Kim Nguyen did a better job directing, than the choppy writing/screenplay. Great story concept, but the films 111 mins, slow pacing and dragged out scenes, felt like almost 3 hours, and made for somewhat of a boring story that didn't hold much of my attention. The acting was great, especially from Skarsgård and Eisenberg. I am a fan of Hayek, but this character wasn't for her. Nevertheless, the underwhelming writing didn't make up for the great performances. It's a generous 7/10 from me

I liked this movie a lot. Don't pay much attention to ratings, watch it and decide for yourself, I'm glad I did that. Good movie.

This is a perfect example of what I call a "Soft Thriller", and a great one too : soft thrillers have the story structure, codes, gimmicks and narrative techniques of a "classic" thriller, but present a cast of everyday folks going to extreme lengths to achieve their endeavours, be it linking New York to Kansas City with a high-speed fiber line.

The Mc Guffin : 16 ms speed. This number comes up about twenty minutes in the movie, when the two main characters portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard have their first on-screen meeting with their investor. After lots of technical squabbles and character development, here comes the first twist : the game is down the the milisecond, who gets even half a jiffy of advance beats the market.

Anton, the brains, lays out the plans and tells the investor that the line will operate at 17 ms speed, only for Vincent, the business-savvy, to jump in front of him and reassure the investor that the line will as promised operate at 16 ms. Cut to the elevator, Vincent is already planning ahead while Anton is panicking about this damn milisecond : there is no more to "scrap from the code", it can't be done. Too late, Vincent has his mind set. The line will work at 16 ms, or they lose everything.

Vincent's Icarus complex, carried by Anton's wings and his dream of retiring far away from the hassle, leads the movie from character to character, each more interesting than the last, from the first land owner to the last unexpected frontier of unbridled american capitalism, quite a clever twist and well executed. And as all classic drama heroes, Vincent's wings burn when he gets too close to the sun, although they are not his.

The whole cast is on point, and by on point I mean that Salma Hayek, Jesse Eisenberg and Michael Mando doing their thing fits their characters perfectly, and the occasional overacting adds an almost surreal feel to some scenes without tainting the whole experience. This is only achieved by a great script and direction, the keystone of which is Anton's character.

Smart people written by smart people, that's chat we wanna see. Enough of the Sherlocks and Sheldons, let's see some more Antons, Chigurh or Zaleski. Everything happens inside, off script. No smartass monologue, no being sassy, only erratic eve movements and sudden epiphanies. For a good chunk of the film, Anton grinds through microseconds and microseconds to get to that 16 ms speed, all leading to the epiphany of epiphanies, which I see a lot of people on here criticizing but I that found actually hilarious.

No thriller without a villain, and Eva Torres as a fierce business woman going the extra mile to prove her ego over Anton's is an interesting idea, although not explored enough. Maybe because Eva's ego is not the issue, but Vincent's. Halfway through the film, an unexpected twist completely changes the stakes for him, making the endeavour not a business matter anymore, but a very personal one. Or more so, he makes it a personal one despite what common sense would dictate, and all the way through the end this matter is addressed in a way I haven't seen in a while.

Hummingbird project is a great soft thriller, well read as you will see for yourself if you have any interest in telecommunications, and technology serves the plot as is instead of being a prop like in many other movies. From futuristic neutrino messaging projects of Anton's to the very lo-fi SSH phone hacking, Hummingbird is a movie of it's time and tackles all sides of the financial tech world, even going into some marxist corners as a bartender who asked Anton about his work asks him then about the "lemon farmers in Zimbabwe".

A sort of meet-cute although not heavy handed, this scene is a pivotal moment for Anton and his involvement in the job. After a bit of banter about him being a CIA agent and her calling the KGB on him, he finally opens up and explains to her with some role-play what he achieves with this milisecond : she is an investor and he is trading for her. Alright, a lemon company then. With his milisecond, Anton gave her 10$ ahead of the other investors. All of this for 10 bucks ? All of this for ten bucks a second, which adds up to a lot in a whole year, as he explains to her almost proud. Then what about the lemon farmers, what do they get ? "They are irrelevant". How can they be when they grow the damn lemons ? Yes, how can they be irrelevant ...

Great characters, great plot, lots of interesting twists, ethic dilemmas and on par dialogue, Hummingbird deserves it's 7/10, and would have gone up to an 8 with a more creative photography direction and editing.

When a financial IT hustler in the midst of his greatest gamble is presented with a death sentence, he decides to dig a deeper hole.

Twitchy, wide-eyed Jesse Eisenberg is perfect as the edgy and on the edge Vincent, putting out a series of unfortunate fires in his bizarre quest to drill a straight fibre cable pipe from Kansas to New Jersey. Better is balding nerd, hunch-backed, awkward code crunching cousin Anton, played by unrecognizable Alexander Skarsgard in equal doses of clown tear sadness, and physical slapstick. Their escape from and battle with Cruella Devillish Salma Hayek (strong boss Eva), stirs the plot pot.

"The Hummingbird Project" is an exercise in determined futility, as a couple of misguided geniuses in search of life-altering, get rich quick adventure, get in way over their heads as their world spirals out of control. And though the film veers off common sense tracks, there's no denying it's power to cajole viewers along for the crazy ride.

Dig it!