Other Titles • Swordfish • Passwort: Swordfish (2001)
Synopses for Swordfish (2001)
1.
There exists a world within our world. A world beneath what we call cyberspace. A world protected by firewalls, passwords and the most advanced security systems. In this world we hide our deepest secrets, our most incriminating information, and of course, a whole lot of money. This is the world of Swordfish.
Gabriel Shear (JOHN TRAVOLTA), a charismatic and dangerous spy wanting to finance his own brand of patriotism, needs inside this world. If he can get in, billions in illegal government funds wait for the taking. To actually steal the money, however, heíll need a superhacker, someone whose talents make even the most airtight security systems of the world look like childís play.
That ís where Stanley Jobson (HUGH JACKMAN) enters the picture. One of the two best hackers on the planet, Stanley has been forbidden to get within 50 yards of the nearest electronics store after doing time for wreaking havoc on the FBI's controversial high tech cyber surveillance operations. Now Stanley is living out his life in a broken-down trailer, penniless, alone and without the two things that give his life meaning his computer and his daughter Holly, whom he lost in a divorce.
Gabriel and his beautiful partner Ginger (HALLE BERRY) lure Stanley into their clandestine world, baiting him with the one thing he can't have a chance to reunite with Holly and start a new life. But once Stanley enters their world, he realizes that nothing in this operation is what it seems and he has become a pawn in a plot that's a lot more sinister than a high tech bank heist.
Swordfish is a superficial movie, so let's address the superficial facts: Halle Berry was well paid to bare her breasts in this gratuitous cyber-action thriller, and while Berry's many fans will enjoy a cheap drool at the actress's expense, her brief topless scene doesn't justify this insipid parade of glossy violence from the director of 2000's Gone in 60 Seconds. Add yet another notch in John Travolta's bad-movie belt, and you've got Hollywood bankruptcy in full blossom. Go ahead, marvel at director Dominic Sena's biggest money shot--a 360-degree pan as a robbery hostage is blown to bits by a bomb that pelts a surrounding SWAT squad with deadly ball bearings.
The plot, as if it matters: Travolta's a slick, self-appointed antiterrorist who recruits a top-flight computer hacker (Hugh Jackman) to transfer a $9.5 billion government slush fund into a cluster of secret accounts. Berry's the curvaceous bait who lures Jackman into the scheme; Don Cheadle's an FBI agent hot on their tails; and an obligatory subplot turns Jackman's daughter (Camryn Grimes) into an innocent bargaining chip. By the time a hostage transport bus is airlifted in the film's not-so-thrilling climax, Swordfish will hold your passive attention or put you to sleep--it all depends on your tolerance for Sena's brand of derivative bloodlust. It's pornography of a sort, and efficiently mechanical, but you can bet good money that Berry and her costars didn't cash their paychecks proudly. --Jeff Shannon
(23 votes)
3.
The sort of action thriller for which the phrase "high octane" could have been conceived, Swordfish stars John Travolta as Gabriel Shear, an enigmatic criminal operator who is as admired as he is feared. Using sexy sidekick Ginger (Halle Berry) as bait, he pressgangs Stanley Jobson, (Hugh Jackman) the world's greatest computer hacker, into helping him relieve the world banking system of a few billion dollars to finance his own enterprises. Jackman agrees, on the promise that Travolta will help him regain custody of his daughter.
The numerous explosions and set-piece exchanges of high calibre gunfire tend at times to blowholes in the narrative fabric and sense of Swordfish, a film that nonetheless engages through its extravagant silliness. Vinnie Jones is under-used as a fearsome minder, a close-up of Halle Berry's breasts isn't entirely integral to the plotline, while Travolta enjoys himself as the dapper ringmaster of this orgy of techno-chaos, especially in scenes in which he blasts away a brace of pursuing assassins with improbable aplomb and during his opening, Tarantino-esque monologue. By the end, he has shown himself in his apparently true colours in such a way that events of September 11, 2001--although made prior to them--lent the film an eerie sense of prescience. --David Stubbs
(23 votes)
4.
The world's most dangerous spy is hired by a government agency to coerce a computer hacker recently released from prison to help steal $6 billion in unused government funds. In return, the hacker can regain custody of his daughter and start a new life.
(21 votes)
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