Fishing Reel
Dr. Daniel's review of Swordfish

under the knife

Rated R.

Vital Statistics:

Symptoms:

Doctor's Notes:

There's only a couple of problems here, but boy are they big ones.

Seems there's this guy named Stanley (Jackman), and Stanley is fresh out of the slammer. He was locked up for computer hacking. He hacked a program the FBI was using to snoop into John Q. Public's E-mail. He got two years in the pen, but now he's out and living in a nasty house trailer. One day he gets approached by mysterious Ginger (Berry), who wants to hire Stanley to return to the Wonderful World of Hacking for a secret project run by even-more mysterious Gabriel Shear (Travolta). She puts gun to head -- and other things elsewhere -- and forces him to show his stuff by hacking into a government computer in one minute. He succeeds, and he gets the offer - $10 million to help Shear pull an electronic bank robbery. Stanley says "no thanks." Gabriel ups the ante by throwing an added plus into the mix -- the chance for Stanley to get his daughter Holly (Grimes) back. Holly is currently in the custody of her drunk porn-star mother (undoubtedly a custody ruling handed down by a drunken Judge Judy). Once Stanley is in the program, he finds himself back at odds with Agent Roberts (Cheadle) the FBI man who busted him the last time he made like Matthew Broderick in WarGames.

And if your brain can follow the convoluted nature of that plot summary, I need you to drop by the house and take a look at my taxes.

Gotta hand it to Dominic Sena though; he can make anything watchable. He made a 75-minute car chase into a feature length movie last summer with Gone in 60 Seconds. And he makes this movie watchable. What he doesn't do this time is make the story sensible. I'm guessing that screenwriter Skip Woods wrote this thing on a Spirograph. Prime Example of Confusion One: what exactly is John Travolta in this film? I mean, what is his character? He's stealing $9.5 billion to finance "anti-terrorist terrorism." Okay, is he a bad guy? Is he a super-patriot protecting the world from bad guys? Is he working for the government? Against the government? Is he a spy who could be doing either? Is he working for anyone else, or is he winging this one on his own? Then we get some hints as to his "true identity," and that only makes things even more muddled than they were. Prime Example of Confusion Two: same question, but for Halle Berry. Is she good? Is she bad? Is she working against Gabriel or for him? Midway through this thing, my cel phone rang. It was Regis Philbin -- some guy three rows back was calling me for help.

Folks, it bothers me when, in the midst of an otherwise decent movie, I'm still trying to figure out the basic elements of the plot. I mean, I'm all for the willing suspension of disbelief, but when things get so utterly preposterous you cannot accept them, even as "movie real," there's a major problem.

Yet in the midst of this confusion stew, there are some pretty lean cuts of beef. Good performances, dazzling editing and some passable action scenes. Sir Johnny is pretty smooth in his role, although he's nowhere near as evil as he was in Face/Off or Broken Arrow. Maybe it's just the passing of time, but he's lost a little of that "wild" look in his eyes. Hugh Jackman does all right as the "good guy," although he seems a bit wooden for some reason. Are you going to be a great film actor, Hugh, or do you change your name to Huge Act Man? Sorry, but I've been trying to figure a way to use that pun for a year now...

I do want to say this for Halle Berry, too. She is far and away the most promising actress going right now. She is still on a roll after her HBO film, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, and she is in a position to ride that X-Men franchise for a long time. There's been a lot made of her decision to do a topless scene in Swordfish. She supposedly got an extra half-million cash for this. More power to her, I must say. Was it gratuitous? For the role she was playing, not really. Ginger is a woman who uses sex as power, and if a woman is going to do that, you can bet, at some point, her breasts are going to be bare. Julianne Moore, Jodie Foster, Kim Basinger, Kelly Preston (Mrs. John Travolta, in case you missed the weekly reminder in People magazine), Meryl Streep, and any of a dozen more "respected" actresses have done nude scenes, and it did nothing to hinder their careers. She held out for more money for doing it? Good for her. It's your body, Halle, why not get paid big for showing it? And, just for the record, Miss Halle, you delivered a bodacious return on investment. I've open a savings account with your name on it....

So, amidst the stupidity of plotting and Halle's nakedness, we get some snappy dialogue, including a cool opening monologue by Travolta. We get some killer explosions, inclucing one seen in 360-degree "Matrix-vision." We get action and mayhem, and, of course, a car chase. Willing suspension of disbelief makes a big difference, but, in the end, it all works out all right.

Diagnosis: