We've heard from quite a few people about the rocking or sucking of SWORDFISH... I see it in the morning along with Evolution... as my travel this week interfered with my ability to see the films in advance... can't imagine that either is as bad as the film I saw instead. But ya never know. I can't wait to see the opening of this film, it sounds awesome...

Swordfish sets a daunting challenge for itself with its opening moments. You've probably heard what happens, but if you haven't, stop reading this now and instead 'phone in your credit card number for an opening day ticket, because this movie is hot (when it's not tepid).

Otherwise, you probably know the scene I'm talking about. John Travolta is sitting in a coffee shop, talking to two guys, complaining that Hollywood movies are "shit." His charge is that they are not realistic, and he goes on with a serenely calm but Tarantino-esque rant about Dog Day Afternoon, which he likes, but realizes could have been better if they had just followed his advice. Then he and the two guys step outside and suddenly they are in the middle of a similar, energized situation. The viewer doesn't know everything that's going on (yet), but it discombobulates pleasantly, and makes for great tension. If you don't know this switcheroo is coming, it's a good surprise; and the whole opening sequence ends with one fantastic cinematic effect that had at least one audience in America applauding (for the effect, I hope, and not for the gruesome death of the pain-in-the-ass innocent bystander who had to bite it in order for the plot twist to happen).

With its opening words, the film is basically asking itself to top itself. And it does. Though Swordfish does grow increasingly outlandish (and a little boring at times), it does indeed top itself.

The story: Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman, looking increasingly like a young Clint Eastwood) is an ex-con radical hacker forbade to put his fingertips to a keyboard, like the kid in Hackers. He is sought out by a mysterious entrepreneur for some reason not named Keyser Soze, but instead going by the moniker Gabriel (Travolta, in his Broken Arrow bad haircut mode). It's like they made a whole movie about the black guy in Die Hard who runs the computers. Gabriel wants Stan to break probation and hack into a DEA system in order to; well, it's not clear exactly what he is suppose to do, at least the first time around, and because of plot machinations the goal of the hack seems to change every 20 minutes, but suffice to say that this McGuffin-system about passwords and money and hostages and so on isn't necessary to the film's visceral pleasure and anyway will be cleared up on the DVD this fall. In any case, most of the computer stuff elicited snorts and guffaws from know-in-all computer nerds in the audience I saw the film with.

Admittedly, there is something a little low budget about the feel of Swordfish. Outside of Travolta, these aren't top flight stars. Once the premise (or at least the first of a series of premises) is set up, there some treading water until they get to the action scenes, once of which is a typically useless chase that ends up with a couple of the stars or their doubles rolling down one of those endless Los Angeles coastal hills, useless because you know that the chaser is going to catch the chased anyway. But there is nothing cut rate about the two major set pieces at the film's beginning and end. 'Nuff said on that, though.

And if I may be permitted to be a drooling boy for a second, there is also nothing cut rate or low budget about seeing Halle Berry's chest, uninhibitedly thrown out at you in yet another surprisingly plot twist. It's gratifying to know that in this PG world there are a few women left who like to advertise the body they paid so much for. Nevertheless, whenever the lust for a big screen star seizes me, I fondly remember the words I read on a bathroom wall in Tucson once: "No matter how totally hot she is now, someone, somewhat is sick of her shit."

There's a book out there called Swordfish: A True Story of Ambition blah blah blah, by David McCLintick, who did Indecent Exposure, but there doesn't seem to be much of a connection between the book and Skip Woods's screenplay and this book. In fact, the word "swordfish" doesn't even appear in the plot, unless it occurred when I stepped out to get some Twizlers. The McClintick book is about shenanigans in the DEA, and there's a little of that here, but this movie is more like Enemy of the State in the ambition of its plot machinations.

Instead Swordfish is a continually surprising action tale. For some reason, the average summer movie viewer doesn't expect much from director Dominic Sena, who did the cult film Kalifornia and then Gone in Sixty Seconds, but for the most part he casts his films well and has a feel for the sparks that fly when methodical intellectual types fall into the high voltage world of crime. His latest film is no Speed or Die Hard, but it will do until some of the other big summer movies come along, and Sena may yet find a perfect marriage of material and style. By the way, speaking of Travolta's character's philosophy of film, I hear that Tomb Raider is shit.

Maximillian Q.V. DuPont

I am not my sister and if you write me here I'll prove it!