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Opinion

Swordfish

Dir: Dominic Sena
Starring John Travolta, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Don Cheadle

I usually start these reviews off with a summary of the plot, but this time I'm not going to, because the plot of Swordfish is so highly convoluted that I'd end up confusing you even more than the film itself does. Suffice it to say that computer hacking, hostage-taking, double-crossing, terrorism, and things not always being what they appear all figure significantly in a very slickly produced package.

I've been doing a one-line verbal review of this one since I saw it, and I re-present that one line here for a wider audience:

This is the film that Mission Impossible 2 should have been.

By that I mean that it's willing to assume some intelligence on the part of its audience in following the twists of the plot, in picking up in media res at the start of the film, and by actually not showing a relatively important chunk of events, secure in the knowledge that we're all bright enough to interpolate what happened for ourselves.

The perfomances of the leads range from superb (Jackman, Cheadle), through perfectly acceptable (Berry) to John Travolta. (Who isn't as dreadfully bad as he can be, but nor is he as brilliantly good as he can be, either.) The twists of the story keep the audience guessing throughout, and although purists will inevitably carp at the discussions of encryption technology and depictions of Jackman's password hacking, quite a lot of that can be forgiven by the sheer audacity of the circumstances in which these points are first presented. (I shall say no more here....)

It's not a perfect film, of course, because few are: there's a little too much made of the Senator who seems to be giving Travolta orders, the subplot about Jackman's character's daughter and his need to regain custody of her exists purely to give the 'bad' guys a hold over him, and it's got Vinnie Jones in it; all negative points, but it gains points for taking a few apparently weak points and explaining them by means of legitimate twists.

It's also one of those films that you come out of saying "Great score" (partially a Paul Oakenfold production). The action sequences (especially the bus chase at the end) are impressive, and the whole hangs together better than I was entirely expecting. Jackman, of course, continues to demonstrate that he's going to be a HUGE star, and director Sena picks up on the promise of Kalifornia, rather than last year's Gone In 60 Seconds.

Overall - eight out of ten.