SWORDFISH Deciphered: Post-Matrix Action Extravaganza

If the film were judged solely based on how it starts, Swordfish would have no equal. After all, on screen we only see John Travolta sitting and talking about the shallowness of today’s cinema. Not like it used to be – he recalls the brilliant Dog Day Afternoon by Sidney Lumet, but he also criticizes that film for lacking realism. What if Al Pacino’s character had resorted to killing hostages? Perhaps then he would have managed to escape. And how would the same situation look today, broadcast live in HD? “One could taste the brains,” he vividly describes. His listeners explain that audiences don’t like negative characters, but this argument doesn’t apply to Travolta’s character, Gabriel. The work of the cinematographer, Paul Cameron – whose camera gently shakes, occasionally loses and regains focus, but never takes its eyes off the actor – heightens the tension, even though it only shows Travolta sitting and talking. He captivates the screen so much that his monologue practically overshadows everything that happens later. On the other hand, this commentary is ironic, as it perfectly describes the film that we are about to watch.

As soon as Gabriel gets up from his seat, we find ourselves in the midst of a bank robbery and siege. All the police weapons are pointed at the hero, but he dictates the terms with the help of a detonator in his hand. Soon, he enters the bank where his people and hostages in vests filled with explosives are waiting. Gabriel is reluctantly accompanied by one Stanley, who looks like a young Hugh Jackman, but Travolta leaves no doubt that this is his show, even when he fails to keep track of one of the hostages, who, intercepted by the police, is blown up, destroying everything within a dozen or so meters or even more. This happens in the prologue before the action moves four days earlier to explain how all of this came to be.

Swordfish, directed by Dominic Sena (California, 60 Seconds), is a typical example of a film that – like the Romeo Must Die – would not look the way it does if The Matrix hadn’t been made a few years earlier. While in Bartkowiak’s film this was mainly manifested in the unrealistic convention of action scenes, here the similarities are more numerous, concerning both the production (starting with the visual side and the modern music of Paul Oakenfold and Christopher Young) and elements of the plot, which suggest more than we actually see. The starting point itself is strikingly similar to the iconic Wachowski’s film – a young hacker receives an offer he cannot refuse from a beautiful messenger of a powerful criminal to meet with him, and when that happens, he is drawn into a conspiracy that will determine the fate of humanity. In The Matrix, this concerned the war with machines, while in Swordfish, it deals with terrorism. But even the trailer of the latter directly states that beneath one reality lies another, as if it were a fantasy. The truth is more down-to-earth.

Sena’s work is essentially a simple and old-fashioned action film, where the goal is solely to steal a pile of money. Gabriel fools Stanley into thinking that creating a computer “worm” would be enough to digitally steal nine and a half billion, but in the end, they still need to physically rob the bank, take hostages, and escape from the police and FBI, represented here by Don Cheadle. Similarly, the creators try to create the illusion of modern, 21st-century entertainment. The mentioned explosion of the hostage is a magnificent special effect, inspired by the famous jump-kick by Trinity in The Matrix prologue – at the moment of the explosion, time slows down sharply so that the camera can make a half-circle, showing the destruction in full glory. Visually and sonically, it still makes a colossal impression, although later we never see such a complicated technique again. And it is precisely this Matrix-like effect that we remember most from the entire film, as it promises something that ultimately does not come, settling for chases and shootouts executed in the typical action movie manner of the time. Perhaps except for the strange scene in which Jackman and Cheadle roll down some mountain slope – the chase sequence could have been ended better.

It is easy to recognize that this is a film from the early 21st century. The men wear fur coats, there is a lot of techno music in the background, and one of the thugs is played by Vinnie Jones. The world in which the main characters move is suspended between a sexually charged club atmosphere and an attempt to make sitting in front of a computer and typing something entertaining. This is most evident in the scene where Stanley is supposed to break into the State Department’s database in a minute, under the pressure of a gun held to his temple and a girl who performs fellatio on him at the same time. Also, Halle Berry, playing Gabriel’s right-hand woman, looks stunning here, practically appearing in a different, increasingly skimpy outfit in each scene. In other words – a film for teenagers, but strangely aimed at adult viewers. The first may not know what Dog Day Afternoon is, while the latter will be bothered by scenes like Jackman creating the “worm,” shouting, laughing, and drinking while doing it – it has little to do with the realism Travolta discussed in the prologue.

However, it is worth pausing at his character, because it is Gabriel who makes Swordfish a more memorable spectacle than it has any right to be. For who is this elegantly dressed devil who, on the one hand, plans a big heist and kills without batting an eye, but on the other hand, explains to Stanley that he is a secret agent, and above all, a patriot? Is he then a negative or positive hero? Or maybe patriotism stands above the moral distinction between good and evil? If so, then only the end result matters, and if it is to be the acquisition of funds for the fight against terrorism at the cost of several, a dozen, or dozens of civilians’ lives, so be it. Travolta is charming and confident, perfectly at ease in an environment reserved for those 20-30 years younger than him, but he is in his element only when holding a machine gun or giving orders to everyone around.

It’s a pity that Skip Woods’ script prioritizes superficiality and posturing over the desire for a more in-depth look at Gabriel’s actions and nature. However, it is hard to expect subtlety, especially from a man who will write Hitman and Hitman: Agent 47, Sabotage, and A Good Day to Die Hard. Woods likes antiheroes standing on the edge of the law, killers who haven’t lost the last remnants of their humanity, or criminals with badges (which is why John McClane had to be an obnoxious nutcase for him), but this duality serves only empty spectacle, and at worst, nihilism. Swordfish, in its message, is ideologically incorrect but leans toward a hardly realistic fantasy, more interested in turning a villain into the hero of the day than illustrating Nietzsche’s thesis that if you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss stares back at you.

This did not prevent Sena’s film from becoming a kind of victim of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack – due to its sensational plot and the scene when one of the hostages falls from an airplane and explodes mid-air, destroying a skyscraper, Swordfish was pulled from theaters in the United States (though by then it was already nearing the end of its run – it premiered in early June). Thus, the reception from critics worldwide was radically different – those who saw the film before the World Trade Center attack treated the on-screen terrorism as a manifestation of Hollywood excess, a loud and senseless visual display; more was written about Halle Berry’s breasts than about the relationship between fiction and reality, which became the main topic of reviews where the film premiered after September 11.

Today, it presents itself primarily as a product of its time, a post-Matrix game with a still-fashionable Travolta, who enjoys being a supervillain. Nothing we see later matches the excellent prologue, the finale seems exaggerated in terms of the number of twists that don’t make much sense, but Sena’s direction is competent, and the audiovisual appeal pleases the eye and ear. If only Woods were a better screenwriter…