By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * * )
Yes, the one which got the headlines because Halle Berry was paid half a million bucks to take her top off. There is a little more story than that, though. Sometimes too much.
Hugh Jackman plays a brilliant computer hacker, Stanley, who's just spent
two years behind bars for hacking a program that the FBI uses to snoop on everybody's e-mail. Now he lives in a dump of a trailer and yearns for his daughter, who lives with her drunk mom.
Ginger (Berry) mysteriously turns up to recruit Stanley's hacking skills for a secret project that is being masterminded by Gabriel Shear (John Travolta in one of his good performances).
Unfortunately, going along with the Ginger-Gabriel scheme would break our Stan's parole because the courts have forbidden him to touch a computer. One lapdance from Ginger changes his mind.
But who is Shear? A patriot, a bad guy, a double agent, Ginger's lover or Ginger's target? It will take a bank robbery, a hostage crisis and some great effects — an explosion frozen in time, a helicopter lifted a bus above the city — to find out.
Directed by Dominic Sena, who made Gone in 60 Seconds and restrains himself to only one car chase this time.
Rental Video, DVD: Today
• DVD features: Theatrical trailers; two behind-the-scenes documentaries, The Making of Swordfish and The Effects in Focus; feature-length commentaries; three alternate endings; Easter eggs.
