all i really wanted to see in
swordfish were halle berry's breasts. word on the street is she got paid extra to go topless in the movie.
girlfriend, i think you got ripped off because those boobies of yours are worth more than the supposed $50k boob bonus the studio gave you, cause you got it going on! okay, now that that's out of the way, we can get down to business. i was surprised, but this film was actually pretty good. this movie probably has the best beginning of any movie you'll see this summer. not wanting to give away anything, but it's one of those introductions that totally grabs your attention for the rest of the film and makes you say "holy sh*t" outloud in the theatre. early on, the film gave me an
enemy of the state vibe, how government and hackers and special ops forces are sort of working in tandem for some unknown cause. but unlike
enemy of the state,
swordfish is a million times sexier. it sort of helps to have hugh jackman play hacker antihero stanley jobson.
not since jonny lee miller and angelina jolie's
crash override and
acid burn in
hackers (1995) has there been a sexier cinematic hacker. having halle berry as ginger certainly doesn't hurt the sexiness quotient either. the first scene where she comes to recruit stanley wearing a slinky red dress, i don't think i breathed during that whole scene! what is stanley's motive in all this craziness? why, the oft used motive of many action hero dads, which is,
he justs wants to be reunited with his daughter (think
commando, think
true lies). but you know what? as silly as it sounds, i totally bought into it. when he sneaks a visit with his daughter in the park, i got a little choked up. now i'm not much of a john travolta fan. since his
pulp fiction resurrgence,
get shorty was the only other good movie that he's been in, all his other recent works being mediocre at best. but in
swordfish i didn't mind his presence at all, eurotrash long sweepback hairdo and melted soul patch and all. if anything, travolta is really good at conveying the aura of coolness. for that, i applaud him. now, back to hugh jackman. the scene where travolta tests his code breaking capabilities is great. hey, i wish i had that kind of
stress when i'm programming! the extended scene where jackman is building the hydra worm on his sweet computer setup, i thought it was cool because you don't see code breaking portrayed on the big screen very often (reason: it's very boring and tedious), but jackman does a nice job, and i hope his performance bring an aura of sexiness to the programming profession! the ending of the movie was very cool too.
SPOILER a bus full of hostages gets intercept on the road by an industrial helicopter and gets airlifted to the intended destination! now that's something i've never seen before. and the fact that the plan doesn't go completely perfect, that the cable wire snaps, is something that i totally wasn't expecting, because you figured the traditional formula is to have the villains make a clean getaway. so yes, i am recommending this movie, because 1) halle berry's breasts, 2) sexy hugh jackman making hackers look good, and 3) the beginning of the movie is absolutely mindblowing!
evolution fell short of the mark, which is saying a lot because i have pretty low tastes to begin with. when i see david duchovny in this movie, i can't help but to think he betrayed x-files. in a nutshell, he plays a guy investigating aliens and the female lead just happens to be a smart and attractive red-head (julianne moore) -- doesn't that just scream out x-files wannabe? the tone of the movie was weird. some of the jokes were slapsticks while others where serious comedy. you're not sure whether to laugh at them or laugh with them. if you're a fan of cgi aliens, this is your kind of film. the cgi integration is pretty good, the best scene i can think of is the team hunting down a flying alien in a shopping mall. punchline of that whole chase scene? if you shoplift, a fly dinosaur will abduct you from the dressing room and flying you around the mall! 
orlando jones and seann william scott (stifler!) are both scene stealers: orlando's best scene is when doctors have to remove an alien from his backdoor, and seann william's crowning moment is in the very first scene, where he pretends to rescue a dummy from a flaming shack. there's more than a few ass jokes (duchovny bares his ass to the camera at one point in the movie, and the final showdown with the alien involves entering a particular orifice, amongst other jokes of that similar genre), which i wholeheartedly approve and i'm glad ass jokes are making a comeback in comedy movies. the characters didn't seem to be very well developed. is harry block (jones) sleeping with his students? what's the point of making allison reed (moore) so clumsy? some of the plot advancing explanations were also on the weak side. SPOILERS ALERT kane's madness (symptoms of a failed anthrax vaccine) being the reason why duchovny's character was thrown out of the pentagon? when selenium (that's selenium the chemical element, not selena, tejano singing sensation) was determined to be alien poison and going ahead with the mission without first testing to see if selenium really does kill on the alien specimen in the lab? and how can any creatures be nitrogen-based when everyone knows that nitrogen doesn't have open enough chemical bonds to be the base element for life? so save your money, go see another movie, wait for this one to come out on video and cable.