Line #49 Film/Swordfish


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/swordfish_001_7794.jpg]]
2
3	''Swordfish'' is a 2001 hacker film directed by Dominic Sena, starring Creator/JohnTravolta, ''Film/XMenFilmSeries'' actors Creator/HughJackman and Creator/HalleBerry (and future X-actor, Creator/VinnieJones), along with the future [[Film/IronMan2 War Machine]], Creator/DonCheadle. Creator/DreaDeMatteo briefly stars as Stanley's ex-wife.
4
5	The plot revolves around Stanley Jobson (Jackman), a paroled hacker who is drawn into a complicated Travoltian GambitRoulette by Gabriel Shear (Travolta) and his beautiful assistant Ginger (Berry). Stanley, in desperate need of money to gain custody of his daughter, agrees to help Gabriel steal money from the government to run his vigilante counter-terrorism unit.
6
7	The idea for the title of this movie -- although it's not mentioned in the film -- comes from the Creator/MarxBrothers movie ''Film/HorseFeathers'' where one of the brothers is guarding a door, and is told not to let anyone in unless they know the password, [[ThePasswordIsAlwaysSwordfish which is "swordfish"]].
8
9	----
10	!!''Swordfish'' provides examples of:
11
12	* ActorAllusion: Creator/VinnieJones' character does not say much, but the scene in which he talks the most is [[Film/{{Snatch}} a rather verbose "don't be a hero" spiel he tells some hostages]].
13	* AntiHero: Stanley Jobson is the [[UnscrupulousHero unscrupulous type]]. He helps Gabriel steal money from the government in his intention to run his vigilante counter-terrorism unit.
14	* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: Gabriel reveals to Stanley early on that the $9.5 billion he intends to steal started out as a mere $400 million government slush fund that accrued interest over a runtime of 15 years. Growth like that would require interest rates of roughly 24%, which was (and still is) virtually impossible to get with any sort of investment any government would probably opt for.
15	** Given that this is an illegal slush fund intended to fund government-sponsored terrorism, it's likely that it's invested in illicit things as well.
16	* AssholeVictim: Stanley is a whole lot more concerned that [[spoiler:Gabriel kidnapped his daughter to force him to do what Gabriel wants than the fact that in order to do so Gabriel killed his harpy ex-wife and her new husband, a porno film magnate (who is not seen much, but Roberts' asshole subordinates gleefully imply is the kind of man who would turn his own step-daughter into one more of his porn actresses the moment he could legally get away with it).]]
17	* TheBadGuyWins: [[spoiler:Gabriel Shear and Ginger Knowles fake their own deaths and get away rich, evading justice. They use the money to fund a worldwide anti-terrorism campaign.]] Although in the alternate ending on the DVD, it becomes a MeaninglessVillainVictory, as [[spoiler:after the bad guys fake their deaths, Stanley Jobson is shown in a cafe with his daughter and using a laptop to [[InvoluntaryCharityDonation steal all their money and donate it to charity]], so the bad guys end up having to leave the country completely broke.]]
18	* BilingualBonus: Sort of. Any Finnish speaker will tell you that the "language" spoken by the Finnish hacker and his legal counsel is most definitely ''not'' Finnish ([[AsLongAsItSoundsForeign it's actually German]], and changed to actual Finnish in the German dub, where he said "Haista paska senkin mulkku", which means, "Fuck you, you dick").
19	* BulletTime: When the hostage explodes in the opening, the film moves into Bullet Time and does an OrbitalShot to showcase the damage done to everyone in the vicinity.
20	* BusFullOfInnocents: Gabriel has himself, his henchmen, and hostages moved into a bus to escape.
21	* ChekhovsGun: Gabriel's lecture to Stan about famous magician Harry Houdini and the importance of "misdirection" helps Stan later realise that [[spoiler:"Gabriel" didn't die in the helicopter that Stan shot down]].
22	* ConversationalTroping: In the opening scene, Gabriel is discussing EndingTropes with Stanley and Agent Roberts. He compares the hostage situation he is leading with the one in ''Film/DogDayAfternoon'', and argues that it would be more realistic if the hostage takers in that movie would have been [[KickTheDog much more cruel]], killing multiple hostages from the start, and [[TheBadGuyWins getting away with the money]]. Stanley and Roberts argue that audiences will expect a HappyEnding, and that [[TheGoodGuysAlwaysWin the bad guy can't win]] to force home AnAesop that crime doesn't pay. Of course, they're trying to invoke it because they don't want Gabriel to do just that to his hostages. [[spoiler:It's all foreshadowing to this film's ending, in which Gabriel does get the money and wins.]]
23	* CoolCar: The TVR Tuscan that Gabriel drives. Powerful four-litre engine, lightweight fibreglass body, unique chameleon-style paint, [[MoreDakka machine gun]] [[BreadEggsMilkSquick in the trunk]].
24	* CustodyBattle: Stanley's motivation for joining Gabriel's heist; his drug-addicted ex wife was given full custody of their daughter because of Stan's cyber crimes record. Her new husband is a sleazy porn producer who uses his money and connections to keep them separated, and Gabriel promises Stan enough cash to hire good lawyers and get his daughter back.
25	* DisneyVillainDeath: [[spoiler:Subverted. Marco (Vinnie Jones) falls out of the bus when it is hanging vertically under the transport helicopter carrying it, along with a hostage. They fall to their deaths, but halfway down the bomb that was strapped to the hostage suddenly explodes, killing them both before they can hit the ground.]]
26	* DisproportionateRetribution: Gabriel/Black Cell's plan to end terrorism is to inflict even worse acts upon the terrorists and their sponsors.
27	-->'''Gabriel:''' They bomb a church, we bomb ten. They hijack a plane, we take out an airport. They execute American tourists, we tactically nuke an entire city. Our job is to make terrorism so horrific that it becomes ''unthinkable'' to attack Americans.
28	* DistractedByTheSexy: After Stanley sees Ginger bathing topless, he bumps into a table when he leaves. Justified by the fact that [[spoiler: Gabriel analogizes himself to a magician and is really using her as a covert LovelyAssistant]].
29	* DramaticallyMissingThePoint: While his opening spiel about ''Film/DogDayAfternoon'' foreshadows a lot about Gabriel, [[spoiler:especially the fact that he wins]], he doesn't seems to recall that the film was BasedOnATrueStory and a product of its time, and thus the reason Sonny didn't "win" was because the ''real'' "Sonny" didn't win, and Sonny didn't "start killing hostages right off the bat" like Gabriel proposes both because the real "Sonny" didn't do it and because doing so [[KickTheDog would completely annihilate any sympathy the audience was supposed to have for Sonny]].
30	* TheDragon: Gabriel Shear. [[spoiler:Turns out to be DragonInChief. Until he kills the senator for wanting to stop the operation, and [[DragonAscendant continues the operation]]]].
31	* EliteAgentsAboveTheLaw: The mysterious, charismatic Gabriel Shear is revealed to be the head of a government ghost cell tasked with dishing out DisproportionateRetribution on terrorists and other threats to the United States, and has a massive arsenal and bank account to do it with. Even THIS turns out to not be enough for him, and he plots to rob the World Bank and go fully renegade, killing his only Senate handler along the way.
32	* ExplosiveLeash: Completed with over two kilograms of stainless steel balls, turning each hostage into "the world's largest claymore mines."
33	* FakingTheDead:
34	** Gabriel Shear kills [[spoiler:his female subordinate]] to show that he is serious. [[spoiler:Only she's not really dead, obviously]].
35	** [[spoiler:The body of the real Gabriel Shear (a Mossad agent) was in the wreck to make everyone think the DragonInChief was dead]]. See also ChekhovsGun.
36	* FalseFlagOperation: Gabriel Shear is part of a secret U.S. government agency that plans to attack terrorist states in more horrific ways than attacks they have supported, ostensibly as right-wing terrorists themselves. The idea is that the terrorist states will become too afraid of a group that can carry out such attacks that none would dare support a group for attacking the U.S. Of course, it first requires they make a terrorist attack on US soil themselves, partly to seize a DEA slush fund for their bankroll (since the secret government money gets cut off), which helps establish their terrorist bonafides at the same time.
37	* FamousNamedForeigner: Axl [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds Torvalds]].
38	* {{Fanservice}}: Seems to be Halle Berry's main purpose in the movie. Also in-universe her character to Stanley.
39	* FreezeFrameBonus: During the blowjob scene, if you watch closely, one line of code Stanley input is a ''comment''. When executing a program, all lines of comments are ignored and don't do anything. When programming, putting comments is important so you remember what was the purpose of your code and allow other programmers to understand it. However, why on Earth would you take the time to put a comment when someone is about to shoot you in the brain if you don't hack fast enough?
40	** A copy of Creator/WilliamGibson's ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'' is on the floor of Holly's room.
41	* GambitRoulette: Stan being able to [[HollywoodHacking Hollywood-Hack]] a 1,024-bit encryption in 1 minute, the FBI having no actual rescue plan for a hostage situation, [[spoiler:not-dead Ginger escaping before the FBI could rush the bank and find her, the airlifted bus not falling completely, Stan successfully blowing up Gabriel's chopper]]. Any number of these things could have derailed the plan.
42	* GambitPileup: The entire plot. It's hard to make heads or tails out of everything -- who's working for who, what the endgame is for everyone, etc. -- until the very end. Maybe.
43	-->'''Creator/RogerEbert''': ''Swordfish looks like the result of a nasty explosion down at the Plot Works. It's skillfully mounted and fitfully intriguing, but weaves such a tangled web that at the end I defy anyone in the audience to explain the exact loyalties and motives of the leading characters.''
44	* GenreSavvy: Gabriel opens the film pondering the potential success of a movie where the hostage taker gets away with everything. He even discusses the story and the mistakes the robbers made in the bank robbery film ''Film/DogDayAfternoon''. During the hostage negotiation, he even orders a plane on a runway. [[spoiler:By the end of the film, he and Ginger come out on top over Stan, their plan a complete success]].
45	* GunsAkimbo: Gabriel dual wields a pair of handguns in the car chase scene when he shoots at the attackers at both his sides.
46	* HackerCave: The room with the custom supercomputer Gabriel obtained for Stan's part of the plan definitely fits.
47	* HateSink: Stanley's ex-wife Melissa manages to be the most unpleasant character in the film. Dominic Sena told Creator/DreaDeMatteo, "Make the audience hate you right away."
48	* HollywoodHacking: The dialogue describing the actual hacking is pure technobabble. The "hacking" shown in the beginning is nothing more than a Linux file directory being shown scrolling over and over again.
49	* {{Hypocrite}}: Stanley's ex-wife Melissa refuses to let him speak and see with their daughter, claiming he's a horrible parent to raise her, despite the fact she's a drunk and a porn star and her new husband is a porn director, which is way worse than a hacker.
50	* InMediasRes: The film starts with a scene close to the end of the film, just to kick the plot off with a [[StuffBlowingUp big explosion]].
51	* InvoluntaryCharityDonation: Only as an alternate ending on the VHS version (also featured as a DVD extra), where the hacker transferred money while his daughter watched. The canonical ending has the bad guys get away with the money.
52	* IronicEcho: Gabriel counting down from 60 seconds while Stanley frantically hacks into a supposedly "impenetrable" security system, with the implication that someone will die if he fails to do so in time, happens both at the beginning and the end of the movie.
53	* LadyInRed: Ginger's first scene, and also Stanley's first encounter with her, has her in a sexy red dress with a very short skirt. Predictably, it leads to some very intense MaleGaze both InUniverse and out.
54	* LogoJoke: The studio's logos at the start of the film appear flickering like on a cheap video camera.
55	* TheManBehindTheMan: [[DragonInChief Gabriel Shear]] is working under [[BigBad Senator James Reisman]]. [[spoiler:Up until Reisman tries to have him killed, at which point [[DragonAscendant all bets are off]]]].
56	* NiceJobBreakingItHero: The opening of the film has the SWAT team "rescue" a hostage being shown off to demonstrate the fancy explosives Gabriel has equipped them with. They get all of twenty feet before the ExplosiveLeash kicks in and blows up a sizable chuck of the police force on-scene.
57	* OperationBlank: "Black Cell" (the secret government anti-terror (not anti-terrorist, anti-''[[DisproportionateRetribution terror]]'') organization run by Gabriel Shear) and "[[TitleDrop Swordfish]]" (the DEA slush-fund operation that is central to the climactic heist).
58	* PlayfulHacker: Stanley Jobson. Arguably {{Deconstructed}} -- he's got the requisite madskillz and moral compass, but this just means TheGovernment is that much more smug when they catch up with him and punish him for his actions: destroying the FBI [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software) Carnivore]] program was actually praised by enough of the public to force them to reduce his prison sentence in favor of paroling him away from computers. But as [[LoopholeAbuse said parole]] makes it impossible for him to use his computer skills, [[TraumaCongaLine he's reduced to welfare, his wife divorces him, and a judge awards the alcoholic with their daughter - and she marries the porn king she works for]].
59	* ThePasswordIsAlwaysSwordfish: Surprisingly averted. Except at the end, where the password is actually "swordfish". Otherwise, there are no passwords to speak of.
60	** "Password: Swordfish" is the tagline/unofficial title of the film and the official title in Germany, Brazil and Russia. [[MarketBasedTitle In Latin America the title]] is "Swordfish: Access Authorized", which also brings up this trope.
61	* PoliceBrutality: FBI Agent J.T. Roberts brags to Torvalds that he used to be Secret Service until he shot an uncooperative hacker in the hand. He's also fairly dismissive of the utter cesspit he made of Jobson's life as punishment for sabotaging Carnivore. Oh, and he has a big smile on his face when one of his subordinates hits a fleeing Jobson with his car.
62	* RapeByProxy: Gabriel forces Stanley at gunpoint to hack into the mainframe of the United States Department of Defense, while he gets a blowjob from a woman who works for Gabriel. Afterwards Stanley is more pissed off about the gun to his head than the fact that he was forced into sex, partly because the film implies the NotIfTheyEnjoyedItRationalization.
63	* RenegadeSplinterFaction: Black Cell, a covert government agency created to protect America at any cost. [[spoiler:Already going extreme lengths, Gabriel (who leads the unit) goes full renegade when he kills the senator overseeing the unit. Even after this they operate by their original mandate, with the film's epilogue having a reporter talking about the "mysterious" explosion of a yacht owned by a man suspected of financially supporting terrorists.]]
64	* RevisedEnding: The DVD version contains an alternative ending wherein Ginger is told in the bank that the account is already almost empty, alluding to the possibility that Stanley has played one final trick on them and taken the money himself. When Ginger tells Gabriel about this, he takes it in stride and asks her to join him on a trip to Istanbul. In a companion scene to the alternate ending, Stanley is shown on a trip with his daughter in a brand new RV. While eating at a diner, Stanley is shown transferring billions of dollars to various charities before continuing his trip.
65	* ShamelessFanserviceGirl: Stanley is visibly embarrassed when he catches Ginger topless by the pool. He bumps into a table when he leaves. Ginger does not care. She even enjoys embarrassing Stanley.
66	* ShortLivedAerialEscape: Gabriel [[CrazyPrepared just so happens to have a helicopter on hand]] and tries to use it to escape in, only for [[spoiler:Stan to blow it up with a rocket-propelled grenade. Turns out it's all part of his game of GambitRoulette]].
67	* ShoutOut: The character Axl Torvalds is named after Linus Torvalds, who wrote the Linux Kernel. Assistant Director Bill Joy is named after Bill Joy, co-founder and former chief scientist of Sun Microsystems.
68	* SkyHeist: During the climactic bank robbery, Gabriel Shear arranges for his crew and hostages to be transported to an airport in a bus he prepared, but the destination is just a misdirection. His real escape strategy is to have a helicopter fly over the bus while it is driving, hook its cables to the bus's modified frame, and lift the whole thing away from the police convoy (unfortunately the flight gets complicated when the cables start breaking...).
69	* TitleDrop: "Swordfish" is the name of the DEA black project that produced the slush fund the villain wishes to steal.
70	* VillainOpeningScene: The movie opens with Gabriel monologuing about the changes he would do to ''Film/DogDayAfternoon'' to make it a film where Sonny [[TheBadGuyWins wins]]. It involves [[BloodierAndGorier an escalation in brutality]] on Sonny's part [[ProveIAmNotBluffing to scare the cops into complying.]]
71	* WellIntentionedExtremist: Gabriel's criminal organization turns to be a secret, unofficial paramilitary unit whose mandate is to defeat terrorism by striking against suspected terrorists and the countries that harbor them. They also fund their activities with high-end crimes, not much caring how many lives it will cost.
72

Context Film / Swordfish