A covert counter-terrorist unit called Black Cell led by Gabriel Shear wants the money to help finance their war against international terrorism, but it's all locked away. Gabriel brings in ... Read allA covert counter-terrorist unit called Black Cell led by Gabriel Shear wants the money to help finance their war against international terrorism, but it's all locked away. Gabriel brings in convicted hacker Stanley Jobson to help him.A covert counter-terrorist unit called Black Cell led by Gabriel Shear wants the money to help finance their war against international terrorism, but it's all locked away. Gabriel brings in convicted hacker Stanley Jobson to help him.
- Awards
- 5 wins & 10 nominations total
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Featured reviews
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.
Well, Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman) a convicted Hacker, fresh out of prison and desperate to see his daughter again, can beat you, i'll bet on it. He has to hack into the FBI Computers in a fairly public place, with a gun to his head and a beautiful woman performing an act of Felacio on him, and he has just one minute to do it. (A Great Scene, Not Explict, just cool)
Anyway, he is recruited by John Travolta to hack into a dormant DEA Fund worth 9.5 Billion Dollars to finance his terrorist activities.
Full of Slick Dialogue, cool Direction and the simply gorgeous Halle Berry, this turns out to be a very enjoyable Thriller, with some clever twists (some of which don't quite work) but are forgivable anyway.
Not a classic, but a good film none the less. 8/10
Mylo On The Movies gives it 3.5 out of 5 stars.
The ingredients are pretty standard. There's a stylish kick-ass villain (Travolta) with a plan, being a high-tech bank robbery. This is all garnished with lots of weapons, technology, car chases and beautiful women. This movie really delivers on the action front, I don't think there's any 'quiet' scene that lasts more than 2 minutes. It also contains the now standard implausible hacking scenes, where getting into the computer system of a bank involves solving a kind of Rubik's cube on your computer screen. I hope you're not offended by product placement because a certain computer brand is quite prominent when IT hardware is involved in this movie. But it's by far not as obnoxious as in "I, Robot".
The filming is top-notch, unlike some other movies you can actually see what's happening in the action scenes (which is sometimes due to the amazing slow-down effects in some scenes). Unfortunately the entire plot becomes quite thin when the movie is stripped of all this action and style. However, it works. The ending is rather vague, as if room was left for a sequel without making it too painful if there wouldn't be one after all.
Overall I would say this is a pretty OK movie, but don't expect the best cinema ever.
Did you know
- TriviaThe dramatic explosion at the start of the film was captured using 135 synchronized still cameras.
- GoofsThe $400 million in DEA money is said to have grown, "with interest", to $9.5 billion in 15 years. That would represent a compound interest rate of over 21% per year, which is unrealistic. At 12%, the money would have grown to a little less than $2.4 billion. At a more realistic 6%, it would be about $981 million, or a little over one-tenth of the value claimed in the movie.
- Quotes
[first lines]
Gabriel: You know what the problem with Hollywood is? They make shit. Unbelievable, unremarkable shit. Now I'm not some grungy wannabe filmmaker that's searching for existentialism through a haze of bong smoke or something. No, it's easy to pick apart bad acting, short-sighted directing, and a purely moronic stringing together of words that many of the studios term as "prose". No, I'm talking about the lack of realism. Realism; not a pervasive element in today's modern American cinematic vision. Take Dog Day Afternoon, for example. Arguably Pacino's best work, short of Scarface and Godfather Part 1, of course. Masterpiece of directing, easily Lumet's best. The cinematography, the acting, the screenplay, all top-notch. But... they didn't push the envelope. Now what if in Dog Day, Sonny wanted to get away with it, REALLY wanted to get away with it? What if - now here's the tricky part - what if he started killing hostages right away? No mercy, no quarter. "Meet our demands or the pretty blonde in the bellbottoms gets it the back of the head." Bam, splat! What, still no bus? Come on! How many innocent victims splattered across a window would it take to have the city reverse its policy on hostage situations? And this is 1976; there's no CNN, there's no CNBC, there's no internet! Now fast forward to today, present time, same situation. How quickly would the modern media make a frenzy over this? In a matter of hours, it'd be biggest story from Boston to Budapest! Ten hostages die, twenty, thirty; bam bam, right after another, all caught in high-def, computer-enhanced, color corrected. You can practically taste the brain matter. All for what? A bus, a plane? A couple of million dollars that's federally insured? I don't think so. Just a thought. I mean, it's not within the realm of conventional cinema... but what if?
- Crazy creditsThe last credit reads "Final Password: Vernam", which is part of the website game. (See Trivia). A Vernam cypher is a method of encrypting a message.
- Alternate versionsAlternate television takes were shot for the scene with Ginger at the pool (she wears a bikini) and where Stanley hacks into the main frame of the Departement of Defense (Helga is not there).
- ConnectionsFeatured in Conversations with Jerry Bruckheimer (2000)
- SoundtracksDark Machine
Written by Paul Oakenfold and Andy Gray
Performed by Paul Oakenfold and Christopher Young
Courtesy of London-Sire Records
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official sites
- Languages
- Also known as
- Swordfish: Acceso autorizado
- Filming locations
- Ventura, California, USA(Location)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $102,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $69,772,969
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $18,145,632
- Jun 10, 2001
- Gross worldwide
- $147,080,413
- Runtime
- 1h 39m(99 min)
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1