Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
This is the second review we've had from the Pasadena test screening this week, and it sounds like Jack Foley didn't like it NEARLY as much as our first reviewer. He makes some strong points and spills a few minor spoilers, so be on the lookout for both:
Jack Foley here. I’ve written in a number of times before (Lucky Numbers, Meet the Parents, Snatch), but it’s been a while. I’m here to warn everyone of the amazingly bad Swordfish, which I saw last night in Pasadena. Not only is it bad, it’s offensively awful. It aims to be bits of Mission: Impossible, Face/Off, and Usual Suspects, but it fails on every single level.
(SPOILER ALERTS AHEAD)
The movie starts out with a half-way decent opening with a monologue by Travolta about Dog Day Afternoon, although the choice of an unfocused, shaky camera warned me we were in for a movie that was going for style over substance. It’s revealed Travolta’s talking to Don Cheadle (an FBI officer) and Hugh Jackman (a conflicted hacker) in the midst of a hostage situation that Travolta’s controlling and which Jackman is hesitantly involved in. Because the cops don’t listen to Travolta, a hostage is blown up, and this is where the BIG special effect comes in. Yeah, it’s quite impressive, but it’s also really unnecessary, and it’s the only good moment in the movie. Sadly, after this moment, the movie drops off drastically.
We are taken back three days to meet Stanley (Jackman), a hacker who’s been through jail and is living clean. Halle Berry, playing what could best be described as a role from another Marvel Comic, Invisible Woman, convinces Jackman to help a mysterious man named Gabriel (Travolta). Gabriel offers him tons of money to hack for him and Jackman takes it, but only because he needs to hire a great lawyer so he can now see his daughter, who’s in the custody of his ex-wife. Anyway, Travolta runs some sort of organization that kills a lot of people and want to steal a lot of money from a CIA account that used to launder money. Eventually, the so-called plot leads us back to the opening, which actually turns out to be a high-tech bank robbery.
The first major problem with the movie starts with the script. The character of Gabriel is mysterious, so you don’t know whether he’s good or bad, and you can’t really root for him because you don’t know what his intentions are. By the time they reveal that he’s working for this secret-secret-secret government operation, you’re not really sure if it’s true or not, nor do you care.
The action scenes are sub-par at best. There’s a really bad chase where Don Cheadle and Hugh Jackman fall down a hill, but you really can’t tell how far They’re falling. In the obligatory car chase, Travolta kills at least ten or fifteen guys, but you have no idea who they are, nor is the chase very intense. There’s also the final chase, which occurs after the bank robbery, where a bus full of hostages, Jackman, Travolta,and Travolta’s goons gets attached to a helicopter and flies through downtown LA with the bus hanging. It’s ridiculous, unexciting, and laughably bad.
I could continue with bad scenes from the film, (Hugh Jackman being forced to hack into a government computer while being forced to get a blow job from a girl and a gun to his head, a five minute montage of Jackman typing into a computer, etc.) but then I’d have to write the entire script for you. There’s a twist ending which isn’t very twisty. It’s so smug with itself, you know Dominic Senna and the executives were patting themselves on the back afterwards.
Yes, Halle Berry is incredibly hot and appears topless, but it doesn’t come in a love scene. She just appears topless in a scene when she’s sunbathing. There doesn’t seem to be much of a purpose to it. Her character then disappears mid-way through, only to re-appear during the final twenty minutes.
It’s rare for an actor to have a tri-fecta of crap, but Travolta takes the cake for doing three of the worst movies ever back-to-back-to-back. He’s not at fault here as he was in Battlefield: Earth, but you have to wonder if he’s going to need another Pulp Fiction-esque comeback in another year or two.
I really can’t say enough bad about this movie. This is the most unpleasant experience I’ve had since 3000 Miles To Graceland. The movie plods and sputters and wants to pull the wool over your eyes, but instead, it’s trying to poke them out. Travolta’s character keeps talking about how Houdini made an elephant disappear in a crowded theater. I wish Houdini were still alive. He could make this movie disappear before too many people waste their money and two hours watching it.
"Moriarty" out.
