![]() Starting out with an action sequence carries the danger of losing audience interest if not followed up by more and more action. The plot was crucial to keeping interest during the slow parts of the film. The plot is complex, interwoven, and has a point. 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. 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. Jackman is quickly becoming Hollywood A-list material, and with his performance in Swordfish, it's easy to see why. 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 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. ![]() 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. A big-time action sequence to get out attention, then a flashback to show how the climax of the film came to pass. The good guy (Jackman) didn't always do the right thing, and the bad guy (Travolta) could hardly be accused of sinister motives. 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. It's been awhile since I've seen a truly enjoyable, mature action movie. And after seeing it a couple hours ago, I am not at all disappointed. Swordfish was one of my anxiously awaited summer flicks. I mean, it's not within the realm of conventional cinema. All for what? A bus, a plane? A couple of million dollars that's federally insured? I don't think so. You can practically taste the brain matter. How quickly would the modern media make a frenzy over this? In a matter of hours, it'd be biggest story from Boston to Budapest! Ten hostages die, twenty, thirty bam bam, right after another, all caught in high-def, computer-enhanced, color corrected. "Meet our demands or the pretty blonde in the bellbottoms gets it the back of the head." Bam, splat! What, still no bus? Come on! How many innocent victims splattered across a window would it take to have the city reverse its policy on hostage situations? And this is 1976 there's no CNN, there's no CNBC, there's no internet! Now fast forward to today, present time, same situation. Now what if in Dog Day, Sonny wanted to get away with it, REALLY wanted to get away with it? What if - now here's the tricky part - what if he started killing hostages right away? No mercy, no quarter. The cinematography, the acting, the screenplay, all top-notch. Masterpiece of directing, easily Lumet's best. Arguably Pacino's best work, short of Scarface and Godfather Part 1, of course. Realism not a pervasive element in today's modern American cinematic vision. No, I'm talking about the lack of realism. No, it's easy to pick apart bad acting, short-sighted directing, and a purely moronic stringing together of words that many of the studios term as "prose". Now I'm not some grungy wannabe filmmaker that's searching for existentialism through a haze of bong smoke or something. ![]() Gabriel: You know what the problem with Hollywood is? They make shit.
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