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Swordfish
Reviewed by Owen
Swordfish was brilliantly summed up by my friend Malcolm who described it thus:, "Was it a good movie? No. Were there tits and explosions? Yes!"
And that just about sums up Swordfish.
The formula goes like this: The hero is the best _______ in the world. But his woman left him/died, and now his life is on the skids. X calls up the hero for one last blank but nothing is as it seems. The only twist in this movie is the villian's motivation, which I found really quiite funny, in a deranged sort of way. Then again, Travolta is at his best when playing deranged sorts of characters.
But it was not Travolta who gave this movie its word of mouth. And I think that I know that you know to what I refer. Yes. They're there, they're nice, and the camera lingers. However, if you want really beautiful curves, Travolta drives a british racing green TVR roadster throughout the movie, which I found equally, if not more ogleable.
Speaking of the TVR, at one point in the movie, there is a car chase in the roadster, where Travolta stops, opens the trunk, and assembles an M249 5.56mm machinegun, and procedes to get medieval on various asses. He does this for no particular reason but to satisfy a classic action movie cliche (that guns cannot be assembled before they are required) in as creative a manner as possible. As a brief aside, I believe that dramatic technique can be summarized in a single word: formulativity. My question is, why was the gun dissassembled, except to facilitate the movie cliche where someone has to assemble their sniper rifle/machinegun before they fire it.
This movie also gives a nod to the fact that nobody in a movie can carry a handgun with a silencer already attached, instead it must be attached immediately before sneakily killing one's victim.
This movie will appeal to you if you liked the Matrix because of the gunfights and kung-fu. If you liked the Matrix because of the questions it raised about conciousness, reality, and the nature of the human spirit, Swordfish may not be the movie for you.
Swordfish gets three pints, but these are pints of Budweiser. They are painstakingly brewed to an age old formula, but ultimately uninspired.
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