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Swordfish Customer Reviews (31 - 33 of 57 Reviews)

Entertaining but not overly original
Swordfish tells the story of a renegade group of former U.S. government spooks and their convoluted plans to steal hundreds of millions of dollars to finance their mysterious global plans. I don't want to give away too much of the story, but it's a bit far-fetched at the very least.

Hugh Jackman plays a computer hacker who just can't resist a big caper. John Travolta is the enigmatic Gabriel, former black ops agent of the highest degree. Gabriel's scheme is a little foggy and his motives are horribly misguided. Halle Berry is little more than window dressing, her primary role to appear topless or in her lingerie in as many scenes as possible.

All in all, Swordfish is an entertaining action movie that's pretty short on plot and featuring a shady and overconvoluted conspiracy story. The action sequences are well-filmed and exciting, but like so many movies these days, this one depends on the excitement to carry the film rather than the story. It's a fun ride at times, but you come away fairly empty handed.

I watched it for Drea
I rented this so I could see Drea De Matteo, and sure she has only a couple scenes, only a few lines, and so on, but I loved her in it. It's cute how they did the irony thing with her talking about parental fitness while she makes porn and drinks and can't even be there when her daughter needs a ride. Also, she get whacked (preparing for when Adriana gets it? HA HA).
See this for her, and Halle Berry's boobies, and forget the rest.

A good summer action yarn!
"Swordfish" is a thrillride in the tradition of such thrillrides as "Speed" and "Speed 2," giving us a so-so plot while building up momentum with action sequences that will have you laughing in disbelief yet breaking a sweat at the same time. The plot borrows from other action films, and is intelligent yet flawed; the action is enjoyable yet, at times, unbelievable. But, despite its flaws, it can still be a very entertaining ride in its own testosterone-pumped way.

The movie begins with an adrenaline-charged bank heist, led by Gabriel Shear (John Travolta), who, four days earlier, employed the services of ex-convict Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman), once imprisoned for computer hacking. Stan falls under the spell of gratuitous amounts of money offered to him by Gabriel, and also becomes enticed by the mysterious Ginger Knowles (Halle Berry), who is not what she appears to be. Stan's mission: to hack into a high-tech computer system and transfer money from simultaneous locations to Gabriel's various foreign accounts.

The movie ties Stan's actions to an emotional twist: afdter his arrest, he was denied the privilege of seeing his young daughter. Gabriel uses this as a ploy in order to keep Stan willing to help him out, while Los Angeles cop A.D. Roberts (Don Cheadle) attempts to use it as a tool to worm information out of him. Soon realizing that he is in over his head, Stan must make the choice of continuing his work or getting out for good.

And there you have it: a so-so plot that is more complex than it seems, with spaces to place action sequences and thrill scenes. There's really nothing totally special about the movie: we've pretty much seen a lot of this sort of material done in many other movies. But, not looking too far into it, like "Speed 2," it can be a lot of fun, and I admire its guts.

Right from the beginning, the movie sets us up to believe one fact about a certain character. There are certain clues, visible to us yet seemingly distant from the overall plot, done so in order for us to conceive in our minds a picture of what the ending will bring. As it turns out, this is one of those movies where, in the end, all those clues come at you at once, and when you finally figure out the rest of the puzzle, it all comes to light in a surprisingly satisfying climax.

Acting for this movie is first-rate, boasting another winning performance from Hugh Jackman, whose acting in "X-Men" proves he is more than just another actor. John Travolta pulls his career out of the catacombs of "Battlefield: Earth" with a bad-guy role that brings out the best of his ability since "Face/Off." Like that previous role, Travolta is cocky and witty, but retains a certain amount of charisma and charm. Halle Berry is commendably sinister as Ginger, her most revealing role, and Don Cheadle plays a good cop once again.

As with any action thriller, there's going to be lots of action crowned by a climax of explosions and unbelievable events. "Swordfish" has all of this, but plays it out so well that it's hard not to be slightly impressed by its guts. A bank heist full of hostages wearing explosives is taken directly from "Speed," while a bus flying through the air attached to a helicopter, dropping exploding hostages on its way to the top of a skyscraper, is very reminiscent of the cruise liner destroying the island community in the climax of "Speed 2." Combine that with lots of machine-gun action, car crashes and high-speed chases, and what you have is a very nice package that is flawed yet equally intense.

However, the movie is pretty prone to logical errors. In one of the beginning scenes, two thugs are able to slip into a police station just a little too easily to murder a key suspect. A high-altitude fall in a chases ends without a single broken bone on any of those involved. And then there's the whole bus-on-a-chopper ordeal, which is more laugh-provoking than it is believable.

Stan's ability to hack into secure computer systems is, for the most part, left in shadows. Most scenes involving this exercising of criminal activity are merely typing on keyboards, shouting at monitors, and drinking expensive wines. The story might be more intriguing if this had been better explained.

Watching "Swordfish" is a lot like going fishing: the wait for the fish can be long and trying, but the payoff of catching the fish is well worth the wait. There's enough error and hokey twists in the movie to keep it from being great, but in its own right, it's still pretty fun!

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