Swordfish

Hack Job

Grade: D

        In the race for the summer action movie dollar, the name of the game is bigger, faster, and louder, and Swordfish dons the sensationalist mantle with a vengeance.  Like helmer Dominic Sena's unmemorable last effort, Gone in 60 Seconds, Swordfish's stock in trade is bigger-than-life stars, chase scenes, explosions and shootings, presented at breakneck pace and connected only by tenuous ligaments of plot.  Such exposition as there is relies on that modern movie panacea, computers that are capable of all things.  When the story threatens to bog down, they throw in computer jargon, barking phrases like "enable the crypto-algorithm!"  

        Things actually don't start off badly.  The initial, establishing scene, shot with a modish shifting focus, is a monologue from cocky John Travolta, über-cool credentials established by a narrow vertical strip of chin beard, shortened Pulp Fiction bob and clenched cigar.  He berates Hollywood movies for being trite, unbelievable and boring, but he's a fan of Dog Day Afternoon, pronouncing it "undeniably Lumet's greatest work."  What follows is a trite, unbelievable and boring Hollywood movie.   

            Travolta's a megalomaniac with the world at his fingertips, controlling vast wealth, supercomputers and arsenals of armaments.  He's in cahoots with a corrupt senator (Sam Shepard) in a scheme to to tap into a neglected DEA slush fund that was started 15 years ago with $400 million and has appreciated, through the wonders of compound interest, to $9.5 billion.  (That's an annual rate of over 800 percent, making one wonder, why rob that bank when you could just make a deposit?)  

            Travolta dispatches his right-hand woman, Halle Berry (who's an undercover DEA agent--or so it appears), to hire computer hacker (Aussie Hugh Jackman, of X-Men, Someone Like You), who's got the skills to pull off the cyber-bank job.  Jackman's just been released from prison and one of the conditions of his parole is that he not touch a computer, but, in a blinding flash of screenwriting inspiration, his motivation arises from a Noble Purpose: he needs money to finance a legal battle for custody of his daughter, who's in the custody of her mother, a sometime porno actress who's married to the proprietor of a movie studio picturesquely dubbed Back Door Films.   

        When Jackman arrives in L.A., in a scene whose tawdry excess is emblematic of the entire movie, Travolta gives him an ultimatum: hack into a heavily encrypted Department of Defense computer within one minute, with a gun pressed to his temple and a fetching fellatrix working his nether regions.  Jackman doesn't so much type as hammer the keys, fingers pounding like a galloping herd of buffalo.  The scene is as unrealistic as it is spectacular.  

        The senator orders Travolta to squelch the plan, but Travolta pulls a MacArthur; his insubordination leads to a high-tech confrontation.  Grim-faced, impotent police pursue throughout, but are of course always a day late and a dollar short; estimable Don Cheadle (Out of Sight, Family Man, Traffic) plays an overmatched cop on the edge of going crazy with frustration.  

        Travolta engineers a glass-shattering assault on the bank, in which he takes hapless employees hostage and straps plastic explosives to their backs, then demands an airplane and safe passage to the airport.  (He's apparently still hung up on Dog Day Afternoon, but we're thankfully spared sex change operations.)  Thus the climax is precipitated, a preposterous bit of gimcrackery in which a full-size bus carrying Travolta and the hostages is picked up by cables hanging from a giant, bug-like helicopter and flown suspended through downtown L.A., breaking up earnest ad agency pow-wows by bashing willy-nilly into high-rises as it goes.   

        It's been widely reported that Berry received a bonus ($500,000 or $1 million, depending on who's doing the reporting) for her topless turn here.  (In an interview on mrshowbiz.com, however, Berry denies it.)  She's reclining on a lounge chair reading, and when Jackman approaches, she lowers the book, revealing her marvelous mocha mounds.  They are only seen for a few seconds, and since she's lying back, not shown to full advantage, but the sight is so luscious it's safe to say the blink rate hits zero for those few moments.  Jackman's befuddled by the utter gratuitousness of it--the setting is completely nonsexual.  

        I suppose Swordfish will do about as well as Gone In 60 Seconds, which grossed a little over $100 million (a moderate hit by today's standards).  But this is one fish thoughtful moviegoers will throw back.  Even Halle's succulent berries can't cure these summertime blues.  

Directed by Dominic Sena.  Written by Skip Woods.  Running time 1:40.  Rated R.