Swordfish

Year of release : 2001

Run time : 1h39m

Genre : Action / Thriller

Cast : Hugh Jackman, John Travolta, Halle Berry, Don Cheadle, Sam Shepard, Vinnie Jones

The movie opens with Gabriel giving a monologue about modern cinema and Hollywood. We then realize that he is talking to the police while the SWAT team is monitoring him. Gabriel holds a detonator which is connected to the hostages (who had the bad luck to be at the bank that day) who carry explosives.

One SWAT officer shoots the terr0rist outside who is holding the gun at the hostage’s head, and the other SWAT officers are trying to get her out of there, but she doesn’t want to leave the bank premises, for if she does, she’ll explode. They take her by force, and the explosive vest she wears explodes.

4 days earlier, going through the airport security, a renowned hacker is caught with two passports. He ends up in police custody, but he is k1lled before being able to say much by Gabriel’s men.

Because he was caught, Gabriel needs a hacker just as good as him, so he sends Ginger to Stanley who was once “the world’s most dangerous hacker”. Stanley is not interested at first, for if he gets anywhere near a computer he goes back to jail.

Ginger tells him her employer will pay him 1 million dollars just to meet him.

She convinces him when she tells him they can help him get his daughter ,Holly, back, who lives with his ex wife, who’s married to a p0rn movie director, playing in his movies.

She gives him a hundred thousand dollars for starters.

Meeting Gabriel at a club, Stanley is tested under pressure, by having a pr0stitute perform orals on him,while he has to crack the DOD encryption at gun point (I really didn’t see the point in that other than lowering the movie’s class).

Gabriel offers Stanley 10 million dollars to program a multi-headed worm, a hydra, to siphon billions from the government slush funds. Stanley accepts.

Stanley goes to see his daughter, Holly, who is waiting for her mother (who’s a drunk and is sleeping) to take her from school.He takes her home, and after he does, he sees the police is tailing him. He runs away from them only to be caught, and be asked to help them, and in return they’ll help him with his daughter.

When he gets back to Gabriel’s place, wanting to give Ginger her car keys back, he sees her taking her dress off, and wearing a wire. She tells him she’s working for the DEA.

Gabriel has the support of a senator from Virginia, who orders a hit on him after the Deputy Director of the FBI sends him pictures of their surveillance on Gabriel.

Gabriel doesn’t take take lightly, and k1lls him and his men.

Completing the worm, Stanley goes to get another bottle of wine like the one he just drank, and sees Gabriel’s dead body. Gabriel seems to be fine though, as he’s upstairs. He tells him about Harry Houdini who could make an elephant disappear in a room by misdirecting the attention.

After the car chase trying to get rid of the senator’s men, Stanley wants out. But it’s not that easy.

The movie was good. One thing you need to keep in mind while watching it, is that nothing is what it seems.

I liked the way the movie was filmed. I think it would have been better without the vulgar language and content.

Stanley gets involved in this to get his daughter back, and then finds it hard to get out, once he got involved with these people.

Gabriel wants to get rid of terr0rists by being the bigger one of them, going after them. He thinks the end justifies the means.

Ginger is not who she says she is.

I didn’t like Halle Berry’s and John Travolta’s haircuts.

The movie’s name comes from Operation Swordfish, an ‘80’s DEA government operation for money laundering .

The acting was good.

The soundtrack could have been better, as I thought it didn’t match at times.

The visual effects were good. I loved the explosion scene at the beginning, filmed like in The Matrix. Speaking of which, the movie is also on a certain color, brownish, giving it a late summer vibe, or as if we watch it through sun glasses.

The movie was produced by Joel Silver, who also produced The Matrix.

The movie grossed a little over 147 million dollars at the box office, against a production budget of 102 million dollars.

Although it received reviews under 63% from the Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes critics and audiences, Cinema Score audiences graded it a B.

Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman also played together in the first X-Men trilogy.

Viewer discretion is advised, as the movie contains mature content (from language to nudity from Halle Berry), and violence.

Rating : Worth a watch !