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‘I
need someone who can do it in 60 seconds." Does this refrain from Swordfish
sound familiar? It should. A year ago, Dominic Sena directed Gone in
60 Seconds. The identical catch phrase of his latest action flick
threatens with an absurd lack of imagination. And then, there is John
Travolta, up close and totally personal, putting down Hollywood movies
and clichéd expectations of happy endings and bad guys never getting
away with it. We don’t see who Travolta is talking to, but the camera
worships him, swaying from side to side through a cloud of smoke from
his cigar. He talks like a bad guy, looks like a good guy, but when he
stands up and swaggers to the door, where three SWAT guys are pointing
automatic rifles at his head, and commands: "Move! I won’t ask
again," we know he is as bad as they come, and we love him on the
spot.
We could say that John Travolta is back
at the top of his game in Swordfish, and that would be true. We
could say that Swordfish is the most mesmerizing and refreshing
action film of the last three years, and we would be just getting warmed
up in our attempt to capture the appeal of a movie about a bunch of bad
guys hacking into a bank to steal 9.5 billion dollars so they could
fight a secret war against all who have the slightest inkling of
committing acts of terrorism against the United States. Put like that,
the story requires a desperate stretch of imagination, but on screen, Swordfish
is a marvel of ‘misdirection’, Gabriel’s (John Travolta)
favorite phrase. He uses the word again and again, setting up Stanley
(Hugh Jackman), the hacker/good guy, for a real surprise.
What is it about well-drawn bad guys that
makes us want them to get away with it all? Every great story requires a
great villain, and that Gabriel is, except he is really the hero of this
movie, and therein lies the magic of Swordfish; nothing is what
it seems or is expected to be. The actions of the bad guy are justified
by his ultimate goal, the good guy is a victim and a helpless pawn, and
almost every line of dialogue twists in some refreshing way all the
clichés in the book. "This isn’t a nice place you got here. I’ve
been here less than five seconds, and I already feel sorry for
myself," says Ginger (Hale Berry) in her short, tight red dress and
equally colorful approach to seducing Stanley into Gabriel’s gig
without telling him what it’s about.
Swordfish doesn’t
pretend to be something it’s not. There is no thinly disguised
morality tale that would make us think how all the thrills and the
violence are really worth it. OK, Stanley gets involved in Gabriel’s
preposterously bad deal because he can’t say ‘No’ to Ginger, who
convinces him that working for Gabriel is the only way to get his
daughter back from an alcoholic, drugged out ex-wife married to the porn
king of Los Angeles, but that’s just a plot decoy. Swordfish is
a movie that makes us applaud to the action scenes after we’ve held
our breath through them just because they are the sizzling product of a
truly twisted character who doesn’t flinch from anything, ANYTHING, to
get his way, but still holds to a strange sense of honor. "If you
could cure all the diseases of the world, would you kill an innocent
person?" Gabriel asks Stanley. "How about a hundred, or a
thousand?" That is the question few people dare to ask, and fewer
dare to answer. Gabriel isn’t one of them, and Swordfish is,
without a doubt, one of the most ingenious Hollywood action movies of
recent years.
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DIRECTED
BY:
Dominic Sena
WRITTEN BY:
Skip Woods
CAST:
John Travolta as Gabriel
Hugh Jackman as Stanley
Halle Berry as Ginger
Don Cheadle as Agent Roberts
Vinnie Jones as Marco
Sam Shepard as the Senator
MPAA RATING:
R for Violence, Language, and some Sexuality/Nudity
RUNNING TIME:
99 Minutes
LINKS:
Now Available:
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