Just watched Swordfish...Spoiler or two. (1 Viewer)

[Brad_W]

tonight and it was pretty awesome. I know there probably is an official thread and this one will be closed faster than I can cry like a 12 year-old girl with a skinned knee, but I thought I would share my thoughts.
The opening was great. Awesome in fact. Very cool camera work and dialogue. Yes, it was rather "Hackers-esque" but definately blows "Hackers" away!
A couple of things I didn't understand or was lamed-out/confused by:
Spoiler:What the hell was John Travolta's character "fighting" for? I mean, I know it was against terrorists, but what the f? They didn't go into enough detail to explain this and left you sorta going, HUH?
The end was great, however, because of:
Spoiler:The bad guy(?) WINS!
Not many movies do this.
One other great scene in this movie is:
Spoiler:A girl blows up and everything is destroyed. Plus, toward the end another guy blows up... both are innocents!
Definately a ballsy move on the part of the director to show that. I applaud him for that because everyone else stays away from showing such things. This, of course, is not including the genera of horror because that sorta happens all the time.
Anyway, my lil opinion before the DVD comes out on Tuesday.
Oh yeah, the DVD was in widescreen and had a couple of cool lil documentaries.
Edited to say that yes, there was some stuff I didn't like, but it was very entertaining to watch.
Hugh "Wolverine" Jackman
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[Edited last by Brad_W on October 26, 2001 at 10:23 PM]

 

[MichaelPe]

I think the entire opening monologue by John Travolta is just a foreshadowing of the film itself. (When he talks about "realism" and "pushing the envelope" in the context of "Dog Day Afternoon".) A great sequence... Although I was cracking up when "Mr. Battlefield Earth" admits that Hollywood makes "shit".
The ending was weird... Yes, the bad guy wins, but now we discover that he's an ex-Mossad Israeli special agent wiping out terrorists. So now he's a good guy?
Overall, I think that this was the best action movie of the year so far.
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[Edited last by Michael Perez on October 27, 2001 at 01:03 PM]

 

[Keith_R]

I loved Swordfish, to me the whole movie was like some big illusion. You are tricked into thinking he is some evil terrorist when than again you never really figure it out. The same goes for Halle Berry's character. Great movie. Great opening intro Spoiler: with the civilian blowing to bits right outside the bank I thouroughly enjoyed this movie and look foward to owning it on DVD come Tuesday.
[Edited last by Keith_R on October 27, 2001 at 01:46 PM]

 

[stephen la]

spoiler
I didnt think john travolta was an ex-Mossad Israeli special agent..wasnt that just the just the body that hugh found in the wine cellar..they found that out from the dental records..
I felt travolta was all american..that took the identity of an israeli agent..probably had a mission to wipe him out..
theres a line where travolta is talking to the senator complaing about his face changing so many times that he doesnt know who he is anymore..
just what I came away with..that and halle berry is now my favorite actress.. here she makes up for storm in xmen 1

 

[MichaelPe]

quote: I didnt think john travolta was an ex-Mossad Israeli special agent..wasnt that just the just the body that hugh found in the wine cellar..they found that out from the dental records..[/quote]
I think he was. I seem to remember the news-reporter narration at the end of the film stating that they found the body of an ex-Mossad agent named Gabriel (I don't remember, but they did mention his full [very likely jewish] name). Perhaps he made sure to have matching dental records with the body? Also, the end of the film makes a lot more sense if he was an ex-special agent.
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[Edited last by Michael Perez on October 28, 2001 at 09:23 PM]

 

[David Susilo]

I purchased it last Friday and it's great. I haven't watched the movie in its entirety, but maybe next week I'll have the chance to do so.
can't wait to see Halle Barry's n@ked

 

[Howard Williams]

I hated this movie when I saw it in the theater, but I absolutely loved at home on DVD !!! It's a great "Show off you HT equipment" DVD. I musta replayed the opening sequence about 10 times. Watching the bonus material made me like it even more. How about those alternate endings?!! Both were excellent!!! I still have some problems with the plot. I mean there's got to be an easier way to electronically steal $9,000,000,000.00. What was wrong with doing it via the phone lines as originally planned? Also the way (Ginger) Halley Berry got busted wearing a wire was a little too...what's the word?.....obvious? I mean, I'm as gullible as they come. I'm always the last person to be able to tell who the bad guys are, but that was just too coincidental, even for me. It was a give away, even for me.
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[Ron-P]

My wife and I loved it, great action flick.
Peace Out~

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[Leroy]

I mean there's got to be an easier way to electronically steal $9,000,000,000.00. What was wrong with doing it via the phone lines as originally planned?

I think the whole point of it was to fake his death. Dead Gabriel=no worldwide search=free to carry out anti-terrorist terrorist plots!!

 

[SteveGon]

I thought it was very obvious (to the audience, anyway) that "Gabriel" faked his death. BTW, this flick was much better than I thought it would be. The only real flaw, IMO, was that Hugh Jackman's character was a bit too goody-goody and the interaction between him and his daughter overly syrupy. They could have toned that down a little.
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[Bjorn Olav Nyberg]

Spoiler:I didn't entirely get how Travolta's character faked his own death though. Seeing the lookalike dead body in the wine cellar certainly set up that kind of ending, so I was expecting it, but unless I wasn't paying attention at the end, they don't explain how he did it, which was kind of a cheat.
Also, I thought the ending felt too much like an justification for him.
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[Edited last by Bjørn Olav Nyberg on November 01, 2001 at 02:58 AM]

 

[Brad_W]

Steve,
I agree with you on Hugh Jackman's character being too goody-goody. Plus, why was he always passing up that blonde girl?? Don't tell my wife. Hugh is awesome, but his character in that movie was kinda lame.
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[Mitty]

I too just watched this film for the first time.
It's a good example of what passed for fluffy escapist entertainment before Sept. 11th, and what a studio wouldn't dare give a green light to now. Especially to approach the subject with such a cartoonish and flippant attitude.
I liked it on the whole, but even though I'm not an extraordinarily sensitive individual, there were some uncomfortable moments during the movie where it stopped feeling like escapism.
Kudos to Warner though for not bending to the sensitivity police, shelving and/or editing the picture and letting people decide for themselves whether they're ready to see it.
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[Rob Tomlin]

I watched this last night, and really think that it is one of the better action flicks to come out in quite some time!
And the transfer was top notch!!!

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

Spoiler:Travolta is not Gabriel, he was just using Gabriel's identity. The body from the freezer was the real Gabriel, which was then found after the helicopter explosion.
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[Gavin K]

Why does everyone like the beginning so much? Sure, the dialogue was cool, but what was with all of the in and out of focus and shifty camera work? I'm all for style, but in this case it just seemed like directorial masturbation. And a huge case of the pot calling the kettle black.
And then there was the extremely fake, bad and crappy looking super-imposed explosion, (which was repeated just as crappily later in the film), followed by another matrix inspired sequence.
And then later on, when Hugh Jackman is at his wife's house, he suddenly time warps into the bank. They never explain how he got through all of the security that had already arrived?
Spoiler: I had figured Halle Berry wearing the wire was just more lazy directing, so I would have thought it was pretty cool when she walked into the bank in the end, but of course the talented Mr. Sena felt that he had to overexplain everything by letting Hugh have that sudden flash in which everything is explained because of course everyone in the audience is a complete idiot and shouldn't have to think for themselves. We had just very obviously seen the rocketlauncher thirty seconds ago, and he had to explain that! And if Hugh really did briefly see someone walking down the stairs, shouldn't he have gone to see who it was?
The flying bus was pretty cool, but the rest of the movie was a big waste of money for me.

 

[Tom Ryan]

I just watched this movie. A complete waste of however many hours it sucked from my life, imo. This kind of film just keeps making me think how I could write each line of dialogue better! No, I'm not a screenwriter. The writing was just so bland I am sure I could come up with better stuff given a little time. To me the movie brought nothing new to the table, and I didn't feel excitement during any of the scenes or "twists". I will admit the special effects are very good, but watching mediocre films makes me depressed, thinking just how much better they could've been.
I'm not trying to be the "hater" in this thread, it's only that I just now saw the film and wanted to post my thoughts. I'm glad for everyone who enjoyed it.
-Tom

 

[AndyDL]

.. continuing from the other thread that was closed ..
How interesting would it be to watch an actual hacker hack?
Well, if the filmmakers did ANY research, it'd be a bit more interesting than watching Hugh Jackman spin around in a chair and pretend to type.
C'mon, it was obvious that the filmmakers spent little or no time really researching crypto/hacking/cracking.
That's just part of the reasons why I stopped this film 30 minutes into it. Not to mention that this film, as far as the idea, is nothing new.
Andy
[Edited last by AndyDL on November 10, 2001 at 12:01 PM]