God bless Joel Silver. While a certain nameless compatriot of
his in the blockbuster game has decided to make a misguided, PG-13 play
for Oscar this summer, Silver is sticking to his guns, delivering a
slam-bang, pretense-free, hard-R-rated action thriller. _Swordfish_ is
the name, and the game is the same: chases, gunplay, the whole nine. In
short, all the mayhem that one expects from a Silver Pictures
production--and ultimately as nondescript as that description implies.
Undoubtedly responsible for that routine quality is director
Dominic Sena, who last summer helmed Jerry Bruckheimer (oops, I said his
name) Actioner #366, a.k.a. _Gone_in_Sixty_Seconds_; and writer Skip
Woods. After all, the mediocre sum is made up of some distinguished
parts--and no, I'm not just talking about those very healthy ones of
co-star Halle Berry, who reportedly received a (well-spent)
half-million-dollar bonus to go topless in the film's (quite
understandably) most-talked-about scene. Berry, who plays fiery femme
fatale Ginger, is but one of the talented actors that make up the
top-notch core cast, which also includes John Travolta as the bad guy,
evil secret government agent Gabriel Shear; Berry's _X-Men_ teammate Hugh
Jackman as the hero, ace computer hacker Stanley Jobson; and Don Cheadle
as the token fed, FBI Agent Roberts.
One doesn't watch a Joel Silver production for the stars so much
as the action sequences, and, as mentioned earlier, _Swordfish_ delivers
the goods in that respect. A massive explosion that takes the "bullet
time" effect to a new level gets the film off to a spectacular start, and
subsequent set pieces live up to this big bang of an open. These range
from the fairly standard but slickly done (a central car chase/gunfight)
to the truly original and ranging from a foot chase down a cliff to the
big finale featuring an airlifted bus, do the adrenaline-pumping job.
For a film like _Swordfish_, the plot is merely connective tissue
between the big blow-ups, and at first Woods seems to have done all
that's required of him. Gabriel gets the sultry Ginger to entice
formerly convicted hacker Stanley into helping them electronically tap
into heavily protected government funds. Simple enough, but the script
soon gets lost in convoluted, half-baked twists as well as unconvincing,
half-hearted emotional content--namely Stanley's desire to be with his
young daughter, whom he is forbidden to see. That this subplot, however
ridiculous it is, is not laughable is a testament to Jackman's charisma
and natural sincerity.
_Swordfish_ practically invites criticism by beginning with
Gabriel directly saying to the camera, "You know what the problem with
Hollywood is? It makes shit." I wouldn't go so far as to call
_Swordfish_ shit, but it certainly is junk in a nice, glossy package,
and doesn't pretend to be otherwise. While embracing and celebrating its
lowest-common-denominator aspirations make _Swordfish_ a refreshingly
unpretentious and modestly diverting film, it doesn't make it a good one.
