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.

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.

The movie is projecting modern society's hunger to grasp more from life, to get richer and faster. While the story and pace of the movie is fast enough to keep our interest in it,the script however, feels a little dry. Imagery is just captivating and production design is on top. The highest praise I can think of the movie is Alexander Skaarsgard's acting - which is smart, emotional, funny and nothing he has done before. A supporting actor nomination is a possibility if the movie gets wider recognition and release.

Cousins Vincent (Eisenberg) and Anton (Skarsgard) quit their trading jobs and want to make a fiber cable tunnel from Kansas to Wall Street in New York. The plan is to dig underground all the way, through rivers, mountains and the like; and yes, they will pay the owners of property to drill under their lands. The speed to do this between Kansas and NY is calculated at 17 milliseconds, but they need to cut that to 16-milliseconds. And you will like this: the speed of a single flap of a hummingbird's wing is 16-milliseconds. So now you understand the title. Their former boss Eva Torres (Salma Hayek) is furious for them leaving, and will do her best to upset their plans. Oh, oh.

The undertaking of this project means a lot of money to do what is needed and the money is funded by Brian Taylor (Frank Schorpion) who is a big time trader on Wall Street, but who also wonders if he can trust Vincent.

Vincent is the hustler and Anton is the coding genius who tries for most of the movie to get the transaction speed down to 16 -milliseconds, and if this is done, then their transactions can beat all other traders and millions will be made.

What keeps us engaged are the acting performances of Eisenberg and Skarsgard. There isn't anything else. This is a slow roll with Vincent trying to get leases signed so they can dig under property and Anton going crazy with coming up with a code to get the speed down to 16-milliseconds, and by doing this he also ignores his family.

A major obstacle comes about when they need to dig under Amish Land. Another major obstacle comes about when Eva puts up cell towers.

Notables: Sarah Goldberg as Mascha, Anton's wife; Michael Mando as Mark, a partner with Vincent and Anton; Johan Heldenbergh as the Amish Elder.

So if you are interested in seeing that the boys make digital information faster between Kansas and New York this is for you, otherwise this is a slow roll. Again, it's the acting of Eisenberg and Skarsgard that will keep you in your seat. Skarsgard may be a candidate for a Best Supporting Actor. (7/10)

Violence: No. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Humor: No. Language: Yes. Rating: B

"The Hummingbird Project" (2018 release from Canada); brings the story of cousins Vinnie and Anton. As the movie opens, we are at the offices of "Torres & Thathcher, New York, October, 2011", where Vinnie and Anton both work as data analysts. Unbeknownst to their boss Eva Torres, Vinnie and Anton are planning to leave and branch out on their own, as they have found a way (or so they think) to get data from the Kansas Electronics Exchange a millisecond faster than everyone else by building a 4 inch fiber tunnel in a straight line from Kansas to New York. Of course, this involves many legal and practical challenges. Off they go... At this point we are 10 min into the movie, but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this movie is written and directed by little known (on the US side anyway) Canadian Kim Nguyen. Here he brings a story that could have a major impact on how stocks are traded on Wall Street. Within minutes, it is clear that the vibe Nguyen is going for is Adam McKay's "The Big Short". In and of itself there is nothing wrong with that. Except that here, it simply doesn't work all that well. First of all, we need to make a leap of faith that stick traders getting data in 16 milliseconds rather than 17 milliseconds (think about that) will cause a tornado in the stock markets. Second, the movie makes a number of side bars that divert from the major story line (sorry, I don't want to divulge more than that). On the plus side, the movie is helped enormously by the lead performances. Jesse Eisenberg (as Vinnie) and, even better, an almost unrecognizable Alexander Skarsgård (as Anton) truly carry the film on their shoulders. Salma Hayek's screen time (as Eva Torres) is all too brief, unfortunately. Bottom line: the movie is not bad per se, but neither is is compelling. It all feels like a lost opportunity.

"The Hummingbird Project" premiered at last Fall's Toronto International Film Festival to so-so acclaim, and the movie now is getting a limited theater release. It opened this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati, and the Sunday early evening screening where I saw this at was attended poorly (8 people, including myself). I can't see this playing in the theater for more than just a few weeks. If you are interested in a "Big Short"-wanna-be that falls, well, a bit short but that has its moments, I encourage you to check it out, be it in the theater (if you can), or VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.