Movie Review-SwordFish/Fourth Entry

Swordfish is an action movie, with hacking thrown in as an interesting gimmick. A genius hacker is arrested in LA. Meanwhile, another hacker is recruited to a meeting with $100,000 bait. (Even lawyers don't get that much for a meeting - do they?). If he sniffs a rat, he is not deterred by the smell. The movie, rather needlessly, uses his daughter, not greed, as his motivation. By the way, the first hacker was called Torvald, presumably after (the much admired and liked) Linus Torvalds, inventor of the Linux operating system kernel. The second hacker was called Jobson - son of Jobs - Steve Jobs of Apple computer, geddit? These weird name references were not particularly apt, in fact they seemed downright odd and my disbelief lost its delicate suspension and crashed and burned.Now this recruited hacker, Jobson, is supposed to be the best hacker in the world. The best! And yet he was played by Hugh Jackman, a beefy action-hero-type. It is nice to see the film try to destroy the pasty kid in bedroom stereotype of a hacker - and it is true that professional hackers do not usually fit in this category - but I could not buy into Mr Jackman being a hacker, not for ten million credit card numbers.Besides, the best hacker in the world would have no difficulty in obtaining money, so he wouldn't be living in a trailer park unless he liked it. And he certainly would never get caught. (In the movie Jackman had just been released from jail for hacking offences). You never hear about the best hackers, they are invisible. So this ruined the realism of the movie somewhat for me. Having said that, Jackman is actually pretty good: he exudes this gritty look that his role ultimately requires. He may well end up as that rare thing, a likeable A-list actor. But... I didn't buy him tapping away on a laptop. It didn't feel right. He was muttering stuff about password scanners and worms but he didn't seem to have that genuine feel for his subject that an obsessive hacker (the best are obsessive, after all) would have.Travolta was OK as the baddie. But I hate to think how much his dreadful cult, scientology, made out of the movies he features in. This loonie, money-grabbing cult takes a slice of all their member's earnings, and then uses that money to sue its critics.Swordfish is still a fun movie to watch though.