Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

John Travolta is making things too easy for us critics. He opens Dominic Sena's Swordfish with a monologue about the sorry state of movies today. That it's easy to pick apart their plot holes, their character idiocies, their lack of realism. I'm sure that every other critic in the country will be opening their pan of this pic with a comment about said monologue, saying, "You got that right, Johnny," or "Thanks for the irony." But not me. That would be too easy. Like shooting fish in a barrel, if you will.

Me, I like a challenge. So, in an attempt to surmount the insurmountable, I'm gonna tell you how this film very well could be the greatest cinematic achievement since, well, Dog Day Afternoon. That's right, Dominic Sena, director of this film and Gone in Sixty Seconds very well could be a genius.

Just kidding. I'm taking the easy route and telling you what a piece of crap this film is. Entertaining in a sort of mindless way, sure, but crap none-the-less. You, me, and the dog are off on a little adventure where we will blacken this flick's eyes, snidely point out all the obvious flaws, and maybe, just maybe, save the freakin world.

What's wrong with Swordfish? Nothing, if you like loud, garish, brainless entertainment. Nothing if your favorite dinner happens to be a plate of multicolored rock candy covered in caramel sauce. Hungry yet? When I say loud, I mean like a Hawaiian shirt. Garish like a red light district. Brainless like a Teletubbies marathon.

The high point of the film is, of course, Halle Berry's breasts. They make their much touted appearance quite suddenly, but are gone all too quickly. Sure, they are spectacular, but are they worth the quarter million price tag that each breast carried for this brief moment of peek-a-boo? That makes for a half-mil rack. Talk about expensive strippers.

The low point is the rest of the film. Swordfish is, for the most part, about the world's most dangerous hacker, played by strong-jawed non-hacker Hugh Jackman, who gets caught up in a plot to swipe nine billion dollars from some super secret DEA project that petered out in 1986. Super villian/hero Travolta wants to use it to finance a war against terrorists, dig? But he needs to do a little terrorism himself in order to get the cash.

Ask yourself how exciting a film about hacking might be. If you said it'd be like gangbusters, go back to breaking into stiffdonkey.com. It ain't very exciting, except for the idealized supercool that Sena attaches to computers. There's one part where Hacky Jackman is trying to create a hydra (which we are conveniently told is a multi-headed worm program) which will get into the DEA bank account and swipe the money. Instead of plugging away at thousands of lines of boring code at a generic desktop, he's mashing keys on a seven-screened eye candy machine, assembling the hydra like a virtual Rubic's cube.

Computer hacking, like asteroid collisions, by itself makes for a very dull film. Not enough direct conflict, not enough visual pizzazz. So filmmakers interested in wowing audiences with a film about said topics will need to manufacture conflict and pizzazz. Jackman, as a test, has to crack into the Department of Defense's computer with a gun to his head while getting a big wet BJ from a collagen queen. We get cuts from Jackman's strained face to the computer screen flashing "ACCESS DENIED" in big red letters to Travolta grinning malevolently. Like much of the rest of the film, the tension here falls flat.

But I'll give the film a couple of points for creativity. Off the bat, we see the team in a bank where the hostages are all rigged with C4 and ball-bearings, rigged to blow if they go out of range of whatever it is that Travolta has monitoring them. Naturally, one of them goes out of range and blows up, wrecking all the cars and people in the area. There's a sort of nice moving shot of the damage as it occurs, no doubt inspired by The Matrix. I say sort of nice because it's so dripping with CG effects that it mars the scene.

What's with CG these days? Swordfish uses it so much and so obviously that it is ruined. Why use a real helicopter when you can just insert a virtual one? The problem is that you can tell that it's not a real helicopter. Suspend my disbelief, Dominic, don't encourage it.

And while we're sharing stuff, is it just me, or has John Travolta become the Charlton Heston of the new millenium? He give such a ham-headed performance, devouring scenery like it a super-sized fries. It'd be funny if it weren't just so bad.

As I walked out of the theater, dazed after being subjected to an empty visual assault, it took me a little while to adjust back to the real world, with its drab colors and techno-free soundtrack. It's like being put in a dryer full of really bright clothes, spun for a couple of hours, and then let loose. Wasn't that fun, kids?

Recommended: No

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older