Swordfish (film)

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Swordfish

Movie poster for Swordfish
Directed by Dominic Sena
Written by Skip Woods
Starring Hugh Jackman
John Travolta
Halle Berry
Don Cheadle
Release date(s) June 8, 2001
Running time 99 min
Language English
IMDb profile

Swordfish (sometimes referred to as Password: Swordfish or Operation: Swordfish) is a cyberpunk-action/thriller film released on June 8, 2001. It was directed by Dominic Sena and stars Hugh Jackman, John Travolta, Halle Berry, Don Cheadle, and Vinnie Jones.

  • Tagline 1: Log on. Hack in. Go anywhere. Steal everything.
  • Tagline 2: Password Accepted.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Stanley Jobson is a former hacker whose conviction for electronic crimes has left him forbidden to touch a computer or to see his 10-year-old daughter, Holly. Thus, when Ginger, a beautiful and alluring woman, suddenly shows up and offers him a job hacking into government computers for her boss, Gabriel Shear, Stanley is torn.

While he needs the money to fight his ex-wife in court over custody of Holly, he knows that if he's caught in his old ways, he may be put away for good. Despite the ramification, the amount of money offered is too enticing. He joins Gabriel's team: Ginger; a tough henchman named Marco; and others - including U.S. Senator Reisman, who is financing their operation.

Stanley sets out to hack into a government computer system to help the terrorism-based spy steal billions of dollars, which will be used to fund his own brand of patriotism. The hacker must deal not only with Gabriel's lethal behavior and suspicious nature, but also Agent Roberts, the government field agent who previously arrested him and is now intent on capturing both him and Gabriel.

[edit] Trivia

  • A lingering topless scene featuring Berry was controversial because rumors persist that, in the midst of filming, Warner Brothers executives offered Berry $2 million to do the scene, thinking it would boost the movie's revenue. Both Warner Brothers and Berry deny this. Berry has said that they paid her $250,000 to expose each breast.
  • Hacker lingo is used as technobabble throughout the film. At one point, Jackman claims to have "dropped a logic bomb through the trap door." The combination of these phrases will be recognized as nonsense by even amateur computer security enthusiasts.
  • Jackman's character works at a bank of computers that in one scene features a variation of the Matrix source code used in the 1999 film The Matrix. Film producer Joel Silver was also involved in the Matrix series.
  • A copy of Neuromancer is on his daughter's bedroom floor.
  • A Finn named Axl Torvalds (Rudolf Martin) appears early in the film. His name was at first thought to be a pun on the Linux godfather Linus Torvalds. It has now been revealed that the name is actually a reference to Guns and Roses frontman Axl Rose.[citation needed]
  • In one scene, the Finn Axl Torvalds speaks not Finnish but German (but in the German version of the film he really speaks Finnish). Additionally, he shows a German passport instead of a Finnish one in a different scene.
  • The title comes from the 1932 Marx Brothers movie, Horse Feathers, in which Groucho and Chico Marx perform an elaborate routine involving the word to get into a speakeasy.
  • Jackman and Berry originally worked together in 2000's X-Men.
  • Travolta drove a TVR Tuscan in the movie. The car has British number plates and is in a typical British configuration (right hand drive). The 'W' at the beginning of the license plate / number plate indicates that the car was first purchased between March and July 2000. These details confused many North American viewers and also Jackman's character who stated 'I can't drive this' when told to by Travolta's character.
Spoilers end here.

[edit] Soundtrack

Main article: Swordfish (soundtrack)

[edit] External links

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