Swordfish: Does this “high tech” thriller hold up 24 years later?

People may not appreciate now just how much of an impact The Matrix had on action films. It came out in the spring of 1999; by the summer of 2000, every movie was copying it. That’s why you had Jet Li doing wire-fu in Romeo Must Die, Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt packing two pistols (and wearing a black leather trench coat) to Limp Bizkit performing the Mission: Impossible Theme in M:I:2, and the gals of Charlie’s Angels doing bullet time stunts. It changed the genre for a while, but one of the movies that owes the most to The Matrix is a little-remembered would-be summer blockbuster called Swordfish. 

Not coincidentally, it was produced by Joel Silver, the man who produced The Matrix. It would include A LOT of nods to that film, including a massive opening bullet time explosion, a techno soundtrack by Paul Oakenfold (who had several tracks in the Matrix series) and – most importantly- sexy hackers.

The main sexy hacker is a young Hugh Jackman, in his first role after breaking out as Wolverine in X-Men. He’s cast as a hacker, fresh out of jail, hired by a shady ex-special forces op, Gabriel, played by John Travolta, who wants his help siphoning $9.5 billion from government slush funds to finance his war on terror. Along the way, Halle Berry shows up as a femme fatale employed by Gabriel, who – rumour has it – was paid an extra $500k to appear topless in the film.

Yet, all the nude Halle Berry and groovy techno jams can’t save Swordfish from showing its age 24 years later, most notably in John Travolta’s unfortunate hairstyle and soul patch – the first of many questionable hair and facial hair choices he’d make over the coming decade. The script – by Skip Woods – was a hot property back in the time this was made, but now it seems like a high tech Tarantino rip off, with the movie famously opening with a monologue by Travolta where he talks about Dog Day Afternoon before climaxing in a a massive bullet-time explosion that knocked us all on our asses in 2001. It seems unfortunately dated now with bad CGI, even if it was, at the time, the most complicated visual effect in the history of Warner Bros. 

The film wasn’t the blockbuster WB and Joel Silver were hoping for. It came out at an unfortunate time for Travolta, who had the biggest flop of his career the year before with Battlefield Earth, one of the most notorious flops ever. It did ok, grossing $69 million and another $77 million overseas, but it was expensive. It cost over $100 million and lost money in theaters. However, it was a very popular DVD and likely turned a profit in the years to come.

It’s a movie of its era, with it reasonably similar to a movie its director, Dominic Sena, made a year before – Gone in Sixty Seconds – with both films featuring soccer hard man Vinnie Jones in supporting roles. A former music video director who became an in-demand action helmer, it’s weird his directorial career never picked up more steam, as even though neither of his huge action films were blockbusters, they were relatively well received as far as these things go. One notable thing about Swordfish is that it has spawned an urban legend. At one point, John Travolta’s Gabriel tells the boss, who betrayed him – played by the late Sam Shepard- that a man named Robert Cox was once executed by Thomas Jefferson on the White House lawn for treason. This never happened and was a fanciful invention for the film. 

This month, it’s getting a 4K redux from Arrow Video, and it is loaded with special features that do a good job of putting it in the context of its era. It’s an interesting and fun film to revisit as long as you keep in mind its age, and it comes off as unintentionally funny by trying to be cutting edge way back then. It’s dated in the same way other internet flicks from the era are, like Hackers and The Net. It’s silly, but also a reminder of a bygone time. But, Jackman and Berry are both good and impossibly good-looking while Travolta goes full ham in a way that’s more amusing than annoying – this time. Is it with checking out again? Sure – I had fun with it and am reasonably sure many of you will too.

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