Swordfish (2001) User Reviews (581)

A lot of style and action, little substance

[DrLex · 6/10 · 26 February 2007]

This movie can be summed up as: lots of very cool action scenes (fans of both bullet time and explosions will really enjoy this), a lot of style, and a standard implausible plot. This movie is very entertaining if you like non-stop action in a cool high-tech environment.

The ingredients are pretty standard. There's a stylish kick-ass villain (Travolta) with a plan, being a high-tech bank robbery. This is all garnished with lots of weapons, technology, car chases and beautiful women. This movie really delivers on the action front, I don't think there's any 'quiet' scene that lasts more than 2 minutes. It also contains the now standard implausible hacking scenes, where getting into the computer system of a bank involves solving a kind of Rubik's cube on your computer screen. I hope you're not offended by product placement because a certain computer brand is quite prominent when IT hardware is involved in this movie. But it's by far not as obnoxious as in "I, Robot".

The filming is top-notch, unlike some other movies you can actually see what's happening in the action scenes (which is sometimes due to the amazing slow-down effects in some scenes). Unfortunately the entire plot becomes quite thin when the movie is stripped of all this action and style. However, it works. The ending is rather vague, as if room was left for a sequel without making it too painful if there wouldn't be one after all.

Overall I would say this is a pretty OK movie, but don't expect the best cinema ever.

Just break the code: there is government money to be had.

[michaelRokeefe · 6/10 · 4 January 2002]

Action... explosive action. Clever script. Eye popping special effects. A strong cast, but too much confusion in following the story line. A highly successful computer hacker(Hugh Jackman)is coerced to help a ruthless spy(John Travolta)steal billions of unused government monies obtained in an old DEA drug operation. Don Cheadle is the run ragged FBI agent trying to spoil the by-computer hijacking. Sam Shepard has a small role as a corrupt Senator. The alluring Halle Berry is supposedly an undercover DEA agent whose purpose in the whole procedure is not clear cut.

If you are looking for a good escape from reality; this flick will give you several big bangs for your buck. It is good to see Travolta play a clever, bad ass thug. Some of his best work in a long time. And for the first time, Miss Berry appears topless on screen; and in other various degrees of undress...so nice my eyes hurt. Vinnie Jones is impressive as a strong arm enforcer. Rough and ready entertainment worth your time.

First Viewing Was A 'Blast'

[ccthemovieman-1 · 6/10 · 20 August 2006]

Here's a film I really liked the first time, and was totally turned off on the second viewing as the Hollywood bias machine was in high gear again, and you can guess in what director (left or right). Anyway, two things remained the same: John Travolta as "Gabriel Shear" was riveting as an anti-terrorist terrorist. The explosion scene where people are flying sideways is awesome, particularly in the sound department if you have surround system. Oh, and yes, Halle Berry and her figure was on display in this film and quite a sight. Wowzer!

Some of this script is a takeoff on Dog Day Afternoon, which Travolta's character re-enacts a role from that famous '70s film. "Shear" talks about that movie during the film.

I almost got discouraged watching this in the first half hour because there is so much computer terminology that I was lost. However, if you find yourself in a similar spot, take heart because that that ends after that first 30 minutes and is no longer a problem.

Credibility and bias aside, it's still a fun movie for at least one viewing, with that early bomb scene most memorable.

Disappointing

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 29 April 2009]

I'm a fan of Hugh Jackman's, so I looked forward to seeing "Swordfish," which also stars another actor I like, John Travolta. The film was not produced with an eye to my demographic, so I did not like it as much as some people may have.

Travolta plays this incredibly ruthless man, someone committed to keeping the country safe from terrorists, who offers a hacker with child custody issues (Jackman) a chance to make a fortune, enabling him to hire a top attorney and get custody of his daughter. He needs the code cracked to a bank and account holding $9 billion in government money, and the money disseminated to various accounts.

The beginning of the film is fascinating - it's Travolta discussing the film Dog Day Afternoon - but alas, it's downhill from there. I'm normally not the most technically observant person when I'm watching a movie, but even I could tell that computerized images and miniatures did a lot of the work.

Hallie Berry gets to show off most of her beautiful body and there's plenty of action. Young men, I'm sure, love this film. Unfortunately I'm not a young man. And after seeing "Swordfish," I was 1 hour and 39 minutes older.

Dog Day Afternoon meets The Sting meets The Matrix

[tedg · 19 July 2001]

Spoilers herein.

Films transport you to a different world, so the beginning of the film, the initiation into that world, is key.

Scriptwriters these days seem to spend much more attention on beginnings than endings, and this film has a terrific beginning. In fact, I was so impressed by the beginning that I will recommend this otherwise dreary film.

It is dreary indeed: Travolta cannot convince that he is as brilliant as he plays. The girl is very pretty, but absolutely fails in convincing of guile and intelligence. The plot doesn't play fair, and that is a must with these types of twists. I cannot understand the hostage plan: if they could do that, why blow that capability on simply getting access to a bank terminal?

Otherwise, we have here a rather ordinary selfreferential device of actors playing actors.

Back to the beginning. That beginning has two parts: Travolta's character talks to us about "Dog Day Afternoon," and how realistic it was. That film is notable specifically because it established a new style of self-awareness, a specific type of theatrical reality. A very intelligent segment -- in what is said, how it is delivered and how the camera acts. (We are eased into this by video sputtering through the titles.) `Vertical Limit' was another disappointing film with a slam-bang beginning.

The second part of the opening segues to the very set of Dog Day, except the attitude here is much more ruthless. A hostage IS killed in a spectacular fashion. And that fashion is highly cinematic, with all sorts of post-matrix still pans and small object tracking. The point is clear: we are here creating a new form here by annotating the Lumet/Pacino model.

A very clever notion. The twists are intended to be a sort of machinegun "Usual Suspects" effect, where everything we learned is undone. Problem is that skills of everyone involved -- actor, writer, director -- aren't strong enough for what they intend, to the thrills stay tepid.

Hugh Jackman could have been the key, leaving travolta to just do his "Broken Arrow" bit but with a cigar instead of a cigarette. And Jackman has the face, halfway between Ed Norton and Mel Gibson. He's at the level of Ms. Berry though, and that's at the merely mugging level.

Finally, I have done some hacking in my time (not cracking as shown here), and I can say that nothing in this film, except maybe the keyboards, resembles either the appearance or the real mystery of the enterprise. It is far cooler and spookier than is imagined by these kids, just hard as hell to show on a screen with what they had to work with.

Enjoyable Performance From Hugh Jackman

[slightlymad22 · 7/10 · 23 December 2014]

On paper the casting here looked enough to guarantee big box office returns. Even if John Travolta has come off the back of the biggest flop of his career with "Battlefield Earth" Hugh Jackman was following up his first stint as Wolverine in "X-Men" likewise Halle Berry was following up the same movie. While Don Cheadle was in the Oscar winning "Traffic", Vinnie Jones was in "Snatch" and the remake of "Gone in 60 Seconds". But for some reason it just doesn't come together.

Plot In A Paragraph: Gabriel Shear (John Travolta) is trying to access information that is locked inside a complicated computer system that contains mountains of government secrets - and money. With the help of his companion Ginger (Halle Berry) he hires Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman), a desperate computer expert, who is trying to stay clean to help him hack into the system.

I'll get what I dislike out of the way first. Halle Berry's much hyped first topless scene looks very forced, and looks to only be in the movie for publicity purposes. John Travolta gives an awful performance and following "The Punisher" the last movie I watched him in, this is another hint that "Pulp Fiction" was a fluke. Tate Donovan is an awful actor, but thank funny his role is small. I'm not sure why Vinnie Jones is here, as I don't recall him having any dialogue, except an awful bit at the end. Despite a short running time, the plot is drawn out, and seems to have too much going on at the same time.

Where the movie works is Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry. Jackman is a likable hero, both handsome and charismatic while also having the ability to actually act! Berry looks great and does as well as the material allows.

Could have been worse, but also it could have been a hell of a lot better.

If only the start could have been sustained

[neil-476 · 7/10 · 25 April 2008]

This film has a great start. Travolta delivers a smug but intelligent, knowing, movie-reverential monologue, following which there is a terrific action sequence, then the rest of the film is told in flashback.

Which is where the wonderful sharpness of the opening comes to an end. What follows is a relatively standard action suspense thriller, wildly improbable in many respects, and with an ending which is so full of unexplained "Get out of Jail free" moments that you watch the closing credits thinking, "Huh?" There's a vastly improbable sequence where Jackman is running down a cliff (honest, guv), followed by a batch of secret service blokes, and it takes them about 10 minutes to reach the bottom. Which probably explains how the bloke who stayed with the car got there before them.

Travolta's brilliant getaway plan involves hooking a bus up to a helicopter and flying it to freedom over the city (because, of course, the police don't have any helicopters of their own - at least, according to Swordfish they don't - all pursuit by the authorities is strictly ground-based).

Which is not to say that there aren't good things to savour.

Travolta as the heavy is an acquired taste, but it's one I've acquired. You can feel his physical enjoyment coming off the screen.

Jackman oozes sincerity in every frame he's in.

The girl playing his daughter is good.

Miss Berry is, as always, hot, and more so in the underwear scene than in the display of boobage scene.

This film scores a 7 because I'm a bloke. If I was a woman, and Halle's hotness wasn't a factor, I'd score it a 6.

Graph of fun: _____/-

[fishpoo · 7/10 · 22 January 2004]

Last night I watched swordfish for the third time. The first two times I thought of it as a good action film and would have easily given it 8/10. Now, a year later, I have seen more films and expect much more from them.

One problem with Swordfish is that that there isn't really enough action in it for an Action film and it isn't thrilling enough to be a thriller. The film opens with a bank robbery. We see a beautiful explosion in Bullet Time (it may look great, but it says The Matrix all over it). After that there's a short car chase and a poorly directed scene of people running/falling down a steep hill. Then we see that bank robbery from the beginning again, but this time the full-length thing and that's all the action I can remember.

Between the action sequences there is nothing very entertaining. The story starts off quite simple. A man with no money is hired to hack into some Bank. But then things become extremely complicated as we find out that the people who he is working with aren't who they say they are. Then we find out that maybe they are who they say they are and so on. By the end I don't really know or care anymore.

Most of the characters were pretty stereotypical. Hugh Jackman plays the same character he did in X-Men, but without the claws. Halle Berry plays the same character she did in Die Another Day, but this time she takes off her top and John Travolta plays the kind of bad guy who can't stop talking. So basically he's the same as he was in Battlefield Earth, but slightly more intelligent. Don Cheadle plays a rather friendly FBI agent and is probably the most interesting character.

The Music in the Film is quite interesting. It's not your usual action movie music that you don't even realize is there. It's different because of the choice of instruments that are used and it reminded me of the Computer game Mafia. Which, by the way, is a great game.

The color of this film is orange. Every scene set during the day has orange sunlight. It looks nice. But it's too much of a good thing and becomes irritating after a while.

Overall, I think this film deserves 6 or 7 out of 10. It gains points for the Bullet Time explosion even though it is unoriginal. But looses points for being too complicated and lacking entertainment between the major action scenes. It is not a must see. But watch it if it's on TV and you've nothing better to do.

Good escapist entertainment

[perfectbond · 8/10 · 1 November 2003]

I think people have been a little to harsh on this movie. No it is not revelatory but it is a nice glossy diversion. The all-star cast, especially Hugh Jackman, is more than competent though they aren't really challenged. There are enough special effects and stunts intermixed with a fairly compelling narrative (it is not confusing if you just pay attention) to make the film more than worthwhile. Overall good entertainment, 7/10.

Clean.

[rcarlino689 · 7/10 · 4 April 2010]

An amusing and plausible "popcorn flick". from start to finish it is safe to say that you should be for the most part, entertained by this film.

Travolta plays a convincing and somewhat ruthless "Villain", with an attractive and mysterious Halle Berry in tow. I never thought computer hacking could be as exciting as i saw it in this movie, but Hugh pulls it off as a renowned and expert hacker.

While i certainly wouldent call this particular filim "gripping". It does contain action, drama, and a slight curve ball at the end. with that said "Swordfish" is certainly worthy of your time on a quiet night in.

Painfully bad

[echelon-alpha · 1/10 · 23 April 2007]

It's ironic that Travolta wastes the first 3 minutes talking about the "problem with Hollywood", and then the movie uses the next 2 hours to evidence the problems in detail. Why can't film-makers actually use input from computer and security experts to improve their scripts? How hard would it be to have the computer-related bits make sense?

Computer-related inaccuracies aside, the plot was contrived and trite. It was predictable and unrewarding.

"Unbelievable, unremarkable sh*t" indeed.

It's only redeeming quality was providing me and my developer-friends with a great new catch-phrase to throw around carelessly:

"It's got 512 bit encryption! You'll never crack the firewall!"

Cool, Slick and Sexy

[mjw2305 · 8/10 · 4 February 2005]

What is the highest pressure job interview you've ever had?

Well, Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman) a convicted Hacker, fresh out of prison and desperate to see his daughter again, can beat you, i'll bet on it. He has to hack into the FBI Computers in a fairly public place, with a gun to his head and a beautiful woman performing an act of Felacio on him, and he has just one minute to do it. (A Great Scene, Not Explict, just cool)

Anyway, he is recruited by John Travolta to hack into a dormant DEA Fund worth 9.5 Billion Dollars to finance his terrorist activities.

Full of Slick Dialogue, cool Direction and the simply gorgeous Halle Berry, this turns out to be a very enjoyable Thriller, with some clever twists (some of which don't quite work) but are forgivable anyway.

Not a classic, but a good film none the less. 8/10

good if you just take it as entertainment

[dromasca · 7/10 · 21 July 2008]

I am wondering where the career of director Dominic Sena goes. After having done 'Kalifornia' and 'Gone in sixty seconds' he did 'Swordfish' and then just seemed to disappear. I am curios to see his latest 'Whiteout' which seems to have been released in June, but I heard nothing about it.

Anyway, he is a director who really knows how to direct action movies, and none of the three films I mentioned bored me, on the contrary, they were quite well done, had pace, enjoyed the participation of good actors - overall good entertainment. 'Swordfish' is no exception to all these, on the other hand one can ask a few questions about credibility of many of the scenes, as well as about the moral values of the character played by John Travolta, but overall when you have Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry near Travolta in the cast you cannot go too wrong. Take it as entertainment and good chances are that you'll enjoy it.

So, where are you, Mr. Sena?

Absolutely terrible

[briancham1994 · 3/10 · 1 June 2020]

There is no redeeming value in this movie. Everything from the story to the action to the acting is just laughable. The worst part is the "hacking" which is just ridiculous. Overall, I feel like I wasted my time.

Great movie! Travolta is back!

[dvdmrp · 18 June 2002]

When I first saw the previews for this movie, I thought, "Yeah, that looks cool, but... I really didn't like Gone in 60 Seconds." I didn't have the chance to see it in the theater, but I did buy the dvd. All I can say is, it was a good thing that I did! Unlike Gone in 60 Seconds,this movie is much more plot oriented. You need to pay attention to this movie to fully understand the plot. I really don't see how people can say that this plot is confusing. It makes sense as long as you watch and pay attention, just like all movies. Also, the action scenes are just incredible to watch, especially with the dvd that uses 5.1 sound. The ending and the villains motives will shock you! The movie will also cause you to contemplate many things once the movie has ended. By the way, Halle Berry looks amazing in the movie!

All in all this movie is just the epitome of cool, and it was definately one of the better action movies of 2001. Finally Travolta is back at what he does best. As a side note, this is a hell of a lot better then BATTLEFIELD EARTH,which by the way was not as bad as everyone said it was. I really think that you should see this, I don't think that you will be dissapointed.

9/10 Great.

See Travolta smirk. See Berry's boobs. See Jackman type. See...

[=G= · 7/10 · 6 May 2002]

"Swordfish" is a rock'em, sock'em action no-brainer with Travolta as a deliciously likeable villain, Berry as a deliciously topless DEA agent, Jackman as a the world's faster typist, and Cheadle as an FBI agent. Not to be taken seriously, this flick rocks with all the stuff we've come to expect from Hollyweird...star power, stunts, pyro, visual effects, busses flying, bullets whizzing, cars crashing, yadayadayada. A must see for action junkies and enjoyable mindless escapism for others.

Note - the plot, feeble as it may be, is eerily more poignant since 9-11.

Good film.

[supertom-3 · 7/10 · 1 February 2002]

This was pretty good, from the cast and director I expected that though and I got what I wanted. It features some good action scenes with some impressive destruction and car chases and of course the money shot of the film an explosion that you get to pan round 360 degrees in ultra slo-mo and a superb display of visual effects. The cast are good, John Trvolta as ever is quality and Hugh Jackman as launched himself as a top action man, in that apart from being quite big he can actually act as well. I like many though thought Halle Berry steals the show, goddam sh is sexy and of course there is the much debated topless scene. 7/10

More Than Halle Berry's Hooters

[Bob-45 · 6/10 · 9 January 2002]

There are a lot more reasons to see "Swordfish" than Halle Berry's bare breasts. Although they are quite awesome, as is the rest of Ms. Berry, you can enough them in the IMDB photo gallery, thanks to Ms. Berry's decision to wear a see through dress to one of the award shows. No, for much of the film, "Swordfish" rocks, with plenty of action and two notable performances, Halle Berry and John Travolta. Sadly,he movie possesses some of producer Joel Silver's usual gaminess and the climax and denouement is not particularly satisfying. Nonetheless, "Swordfish" is a reasonably good romp at the movies, and theres always Halley Berry...

How could anybody not like this movie? (**There will be a minor Spoiler**)

[showgirl626 · 6/10 · 24 October 2004]

I tend not to like movies that are driven by special effects, superfluous sexuality and hot superstars, but Swordfish is definitely worth catching. Travolta is the penultimate charismatic bad guy, and that alone makes this movie worth watching.

Halle Berry's role didn't impress me much, though I do think she's a good actress (see Introducing Dorothy Dandridge). Don Cheadle didn't bring anything unique to his role either and Sam Shepard's character wasn't even necessary, but Hugh Jackman was great. There haven't been many movies I've seen where he impresses me a whole lot, but this was one of them. And, yes, I have to admit, the fact that he is so yummy in this movie probably turned my head a little...

Getting back to Travolta, he is so good at playing really freaky sinister characters while still maintaining that friendly, bubbleheaded Vinnie Barbarino demeanor (which makes the character that much more disturbing)...and that crazy facial hair is a nice touch. I generally like more thought-provoking fare that's more driven by plot than explosions, but Swordfish is one of the few exceptions to that rule.

Guys: catch this flick because it's a good guy flick, and because Halle Berry shows off the wonderful work of her cosmetic surgeon, while leaving very little to the imagination.

Gals: Hugh Jackman. What else do I need to say?

Like a good old-fashioned action movie, but with a good plot.

[jwillis81 · 9/10 · 9 June 2001]

Swordfish was one of my anxiously awaited summer flicks. And after seeing it a couple hours ago, I am not at all disappointed. It's been awhile since I've seen a truly enjoyable, mature action movie. With the slew of PG-13 action movies of recent years, it's refreshing to see one that at least acknowledges that many intense situations do involve language, sex, and mixed character reactions - it wasn't just another black and white, good and bad movie where the good guy does only good things and the bad guy has only evil intentions. The good guy (Jackman) didn't always do the right thing, and the bad guy (Travolta) could hardly be accused of sinister motives.

The film starts off with a bang ... literally. A big-time action sequence to get out attention, then a flashback to show how the climax of the film came to pass. The out-of-order editing was actually effective and interesting, rather than seeming like yet another failed attempt to mimic Pulp Fiction and those other movies that brought attention to the idea of showing a film out of chronological order.

Jackman was great as computer hacker Stanley Jobson, devoted father who just happened to get brought down for computer-related felonies after hacking into and making public an FBI e-mail surveillance operation. Forbidden to even touch a computer for the rest of his days, he is lured back into the life by Travolta, who offers him $100,000 just to meet him (and take an interesting version of an initiation). Jackman is quickly becoming Hollywood A-list material, and with his performance in Swordfish, it's easy to see why. He can keep up with the smooth-talking, fast-moving Travolta as well as show enough emotion to make him seem like a real person and not just a run-of-the-mill action hero.

The plot of the film is fantastic. It's not just a typical heist film, or action plot where the hero has to save the hostages, blowing the hell out of the bad guys in the process. The plot is complex, interwoven, and has a point. The plot was crucial to keeping interest during the slow parts of the film. Starting out with an action sequence carries the danger of losing audience interest if not followed up by more and more action. Thankfully, the plot manages to retain interest during those points in the film where things aren't exploding and buses aren't flying through metropolitan airspace, suspended from a heavy loading chopper.

The best part about this film was the interractions between the characters. Stanley is a smart guy, and Gabriel's smarter. Just when Stanley (and the audience) thinks they have Gabriel in a tight spot, he'll surprise everyone with some improvised ingenuity. There are so many films in the action genre that result to dumbing down the smart villains, just so the hero of the story will look good when he comes up with a relatively weak solution to the complex plot. The villains often slip up or make some kind of fatal faux pas in judgment that allows the hero to triumph. There's none of that here. The hero and villain are both smart, and both stay that way until the very end.

This is a great summer movie. See it. See it twice or three times, even. If you're looking for high art or something that really speaks to you and changes the way you see the world, don't see it. But if you want to see a movie for the sake of entertainment and having a good time, Swordfish is the movie to go to. If Swordfish is any indication of the rest of this summer's big action blockbusters, we're certainly in good shape this year.

Not a Bunch of Horse Feathers More of a Guilty Pleasure.

[LeonLouisRicci · 7/10 · 23 December 2013]

Forget all the Snooty Critics, this is a Fun Movie that is Eye Candy Elitism at its Mind-Numbing best. All Flash and Frenzy with a dash of Down and Dirty this Thing plays with the Audience as it plays out its Outlandish Plot. Star Power and Powerful State of the Art (2001) SFX make this a very Watchable Guilty Pleasure.

A trap that is imminent in Movies, a heavy inclusion of Computers and the constantly changing Operating Systems, is glaring and the Movie relies way too much on this Anachronistic Pitfall. These Things are almost always Outdated before the Movie even hits the Multiplexes and by the Time it is released on Disc it can seem Laughably Lame. Computer Capabilities and Performance have a Shelf Life of about a Minute and a Half.

But Technobabble aside, this is nothing more than one more of those that are made to sell tickets and popcorn. If You are looking for something to make a whole lot of sense and have more than a few Brain Cells firing at the same time, don't expect that here.

Stupid, stupid, stupid

[kai_sheffield · 4/10 · 4 December 2004]

-SPOILERS-

I kind of liked Swordfish the first time I watched it, but I just saw it again and realized how stupid it is.

Hugh Jackman plays a paroled hacker (Stan) who wants custody of his daughter. Now, obviously he has to be portrayed as the 'good guy,' so he explains midway through the movie that he was jailed because he hacked into and destroyed an FBI program that was illegally gathering info about people. But we also have to believe that the courts refused him any access at all to his child and sent her to live with a porn producer instead. OK... but it gets stupider. The way he can supposedly get his daughter back is by getting tons of money to hire a better lawyer, and that's why he works for John Travolta's terrorist organization. What a hero. Of course, he doesn't get any punishment for single-handedly enabling the entire bank robbery, because he did it to get money to hire a good lawyer to overturn a court case that was ruled repeated against him.

John Travolta's character, Gabriel, is even stupider. Gabriel runs a radical anti-terrorist terrorist group. He wants to 'protect the American way of life' by retaliating for terrorism with even harsher terrorism, to make 'rogue states' stop harbouring terrorists. Gabriel is willing to kill as many people as it takes to preserve 'the American way of life,' including Americans. But Gabriel doesn't lead the American way of life, he lives in a mansion full of sluts, alcohol, and techno music. This movie came out before 9/11 so it is not clear what Gabriel is even retaliating against. He is the biggest threat to the American way of life. Not to mention that murdering civilians in countries that harbor terrorists will do nothing to change the minds of the dictators who rule those countries. Gabriel has a bone to pick with the government (in this case the FBI) so why doesn't he realize that all the other anti-American terrorism is caused by that same government?

The other actors aren't very good: Halle Berry is a bimbo, Don Cheadle is awful and so is Vinnie Jones. The plot twist at the end is poorly explained (why is Halle Berry still alive?) and the action sequences are dull. All in all a poor attempt to rip off Tarantino and Guy Ritchie. John Travolta's description of bad movies at the beginning of the film will ring true by the time you have finished watching it.

He Who Hacks Last

[thinker1691 · 9/10 · 12 March 2007]

If one is seeking an action oriented tale which is packed with all the right ingredients, such as drama, sex, beauty and an exciting story line, the film, Swordfish is it. The plot is of a sophisticated, philosophy driven, definitely clever, master criminal, Gabriel Shear (John Travolta,) who discovers the F. B.I. has amassed over a billion dollars and is keeping it's where-abouts secret from the public eye. He means to have it, whatever it takes. Few are worried the fortune is in danger of being stolen as the billions in U.S. currency are stored and kept in a vault guarded and defended by a super-computer who's electronic defenses include an ingeniously engineered cryptic and unbreakable 500 Gigwatt cryptic combination. However, all this changes when top cop and D. E. A. Agent J.T. Roberts (Don Cheadle) learns the master criminal has hired the two most celebrated and re-known computer hackers from around the world. One of them is Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman) who is promised $10.000.000 and his daughter's safe return if he can break and hack into the super guarded computer to retrieve the money. Helping, Don Chedel is voluptuous and riveting super model, Halley Berry who brings all of her delicious form to the big screen. The film erupts with a hair-raising, dynamically driven explosion which then launches itself into an equally captivating film. Keep your eyes on the dynamic players as they combine to create a classic. ****

Could've been better; could've been worse

[Soltes25 · 7/10 · 10 June 2001]

If you're looking for good acting, a coherent plot, an intelligent script, and developed characters, don't see "Swordfish." If you're looking for an hour and forty minutes to waste, daring intrigue, and things getting "blowed up," then go see "Swordfish." This movie tries to be serious, and it terribly fails. However, in its failure comes some decent action sequences and a neat plot line. "Swordfish," will deliver as any other action movie will, don't expect much, and you'll enjoy yourself. If you make this movie out to be something beyond a simple hacker flick, get ready for a disappointment.--*** B+

Ouch...

[KaZenPhi · 2/10 · 23 January 2022]

This is one of those movies where I kept thinking "whatever I rated this back then, it couldn't possibly have been low enough"

It stars John Travolta fresh off his Battlefield Earth success, sporting a fine beer belly, the worst soul patch of the noughties (which is saying a lot) and the hair cut of every annoying techbro you ever met in school who constantly bragged about his IQ and his graphics card specs. Also starring are X-men cohorts Hugh Jackman (playing the bad boy from your favorite boy band) and Halle Berry (playing Halle Berry). They are supposed to have the hots for each other I suppose, but I think both had more chemistry with the toady guy with the long tongue in X-Men than they have here.

The story is a quagmire of meaningless tech lingo, cheap suits, silly shades, intrusive attempts at coolness and bad action. Everything is digitally color-corrected because it looked cool in the Matrix. There are club scenes with electronica, because it looked cool in the Matrix. The protagonists are stylishly dressed computer geniuses/hard boiled detective like characters because it was cool in the Matrix. It's one of the most transparent uncreative attempts to copy the formula I've seen.

What people didn't seem to get is that Matrix was a genuinely great movie, inventive and smartly constructed, and not just a cool flick where people wore long coats and black sunglasses. Funnily enough the longer this film goes the more it looks and feels like a Hackers knockoff, rather than a Matrix knockoff, which is probably not what they were going for. If only it was as entertaining as Hackers though.

The hacking is predictably hokey and cheesy of course, you know the drill: montages of someone typing really fast in a command prompt that is completely meaningless and ugly, set to big beat or house music. However the comedic value is very limited and the scenes tend to get interrupted by some of the most unremarkable action set pieces you've ever slept through. Elements from the schlockfest Mission Impossible 2 keep inexplicably creeping in (minus Cruise's splendid haircut), because noone involved had any idea what they were doing and you have a lot of time to start wondering what you're even doing with your life and that inventing movies might have been a mistake in the first place.

After meandering thusly for quite a while Swordfish eventually goes back to aping Matrix visuals again, but at this point I was so bored not even the silly glasses and attires did elicit a tiny chuckle.

I'll give Swordfish one teensy bit of credit though: the opening scene of Travolta's allegedly badass deeply pretentious monologue, that was supposed to be an intense truth-bomb moment, was grade-A comedic gold. After that it is all downhill as far as the entertainment value goes. They should have let him go ham on the hamminess. Imagine the Travolta from face/off or Broken Arrow in this one and you immediately get a better film.

Apart from being a bad knockoff this is seriously one of the worst action movies of its time and it aged about as gracefully as an open yogurt you forgot in your old fridge. It falls flat on every level. Whereas Equilibrium got unfairly lambasted I think critics and audiences alike should have been much more cruel with Swordfish. I'm assuming the relatively respectable imdb score is due to noone having watched this in the last 20 years and rating it on hazy memories of it being ok.