So when I made the decision to do this, I decided I would sometimes take a break from the news of the day and instead do some pop culture related stuff. Because I love pop culture and, let’s be honest, Brendan only has a passing familiarity with it. Plus, I have a minor in Film and it’s not doing any good just sitting there.
Additionally, nothing of note really happened this week. Massachusetts elected a Republican to the Senate? Pff, when’s the last time they did that, 2006? (What? Oh really? That long?) The Supreme Court lifted restrictions on corporations donating to campaigns? Well, of course, corporations are individuals. Sure, the precedent is based on an accidentally transcribed offhand comment made by a justice, but who cares? And so on. You get the point. Ho-hum, slow news week in history.
Therefore, I give you a pop culture-y column. It is about one of the seminal, but oft overlooked films of our time. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but…it’s pretty genius.
[Editor’s Note: After the jump, Halle Berry’s Boobs!!! Well, not really. I mean, it’s SFW. But they’re discussed, and pictorially hinted at. … P.S. C’mon Tim, you gotta do better at the salacious self-promotion. 🙂 -ed.]
In June of 2001, people flocked to theatres to see a small arthouse picture called “Swordfish.” Starring John Travolta (Mad City), Halle Berry (B*A*P*S), Don Cheadle (Volcano), and Hugh Jackman (Paperback Hero), the movie cost a modest 102 million dollars to make, and made around 147 million. It was hailed by critics as “loaded with pointless machinations,” “jaded, cynical, dumb, and degenerate,” and “trite and overdone and undercooked and thrown together and ridiculous and wasteful.” Fans showered it with enthusiastic statements like “Yeah…right…Travolta had some weird facial hair in that one, right?” and “Dude, did you see Halle Berry’s breasts?”
Dude, they are like totally behind that book! And when she shows 'em? Completely plot driven!
What none of them realized, what is only clear now, is that “Swordfish” was a work of fiction so prescient that it should be included in the canon with such classics as the novel The Better Angels and the film “The Truman Show.” Three months before the horror of September 11, “Swordfish” was already discussing what was to be the Bush Administration approach to dealing with enemies of the state.
So why does no one talk about “Swordfish” these days? Well, cynics might say it is because it is an eminently forgettable work of fiction directed with a total lack of spirit by Dominic Sena. But we are not cynics here are we?
Instead, let us ignore the above. Or its appalling attitude towards women—at one point a woman willingly performs a sex act on Hugh Jackman moments after meeting him because…umm…Travolta’s character told her to. Maybe? I mean, sure Jackman’s a handsome fella and all, but…really? Also, Jackman’s ex-wife, as rendered by Drea de Matteo, is raging alcoholic who refuses visitation rights to Jackman while forgetting to pick her daughter up from school and participating as an actress in her new husband’s burgeoning porn empire. Halle Berry’s character’s ability to hit a golf ball and look great in black underwear somehow does not make up for these depictions. But perhaps I am overly sensitive.
We’ll also ignore that “Swordfish” is ridiculously poorly paced and that in many ways, it represented the next evolution of action films, ditching the muscle fetishism of the 80’s action film with Stallone, Schwarzenegger and the like for toy (weapons, car, other vehicles, etc) fetishism that did not so much reduce actors to props as to ignore them entirely.
Instead let’s just say that, in time, others will come to see “Swordfish” as I do.
Before I get to its impressive prediction of the future, however, allow me to reassure you that it is no textbook dry “important” film. No, this is an education that you will enjoy taking in. Why? I thought you’d never ask.
Why even bother to have facial hair that tiny?
1.) John Travolta plays a villain- In judging Travolta films post-Pulp Fiction, the surest way to guess at their quality is to observe what side of the law he is on. If he’s playing a good guy, that’s one you can stand to miss. However, if he’s a baddie, well, you are in for quite the ride. Observe “Face/Off” wherein he out crazies/out scenery chews Nic Cage. That’s no easy feat, especially in a film that features Cage rasping “I could eat a peach for hours” as a sexual come-on and a scene where-in he spins around the room pointing at people shouting “F___ you! F___ you!” for what must be at least five minutes with no discernible decrease in intensity. There are exceptions to this rule of course—he’s a bad guy in Battlefield Earth and it still unwatchable, and a good guy in A Civil Action and that is a great performance in an even better movie—but it is easily the best tool I have found to date in figuring out whether or not you should watch his movies.
Anyway, in this one, his Gabriel Shear is a cinephile with the audacity to offer improvements to movies that are about 200 times better than this one, including “Sugarland Express” and “Dog Day Afternoon.” He also rocks a goatee so thin that if one was to stare at it for too long they would either lose their minds or realize all the secrets of the universe…and probably both. So yeah, it proves the John Travolta as Villain rule, hereinafter known as the JTV Decree of 2010.
2.) Don Cheadle’s in it. Cheadle’s cool in everything. So is Tim Omundson and he’s in Psych, which means he has screen time with Dule Hill. Dule Hill is hilarious.
3.) Sena proves to be the only filmmaker besides the Wachowski brothers to make interesting use of bullet time in a spectacular “walking claymore mine” scene. (I’m actually quite serious about that.)
4.) It actually kind of makes hacking interesting. I mean, it depicts it in outrageously inaccurate manner. But still, kind of interesting.
Alright then, back to the predictive nature of this film. Travolta’s Gabriel is a black ops man working for a senator played by Sam Shepard. Gabriel is apparently a man of many identities who gladly fights for America’s interests at home and abroad, which has led to him to needing to hack into bank computers to steal money made from some covert drug war programs to fund his endeavors. For some reason, this hacking has to happen in the actual bank because…because drama, that’s why!
To justify the lengths he’ll go to get this money, including killing the senator, the senator’s aide, several government mercenaries, a Finnish hacker, taking many, many people hostage, and flying a bus over the city of Los Angeles (I know, I know…just trust me, it happens), he utters this line, “[We are at war with] anyone who impinges on America’s freedom. Terrorist states, Stanley. Someone must bring their war to them. 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.”
In other words, you’re with us or against us, and if you are against us, there is no limit to what we can do to you. It is not torture if the United States does it, it is only necessary. And this was a full three months before that, more or less, became our official policy on these things.
In the end, Gabriel gets away with it. He gets the money and no one stops him from doing what he sees as his job—protecting American ideals by any means necessary.
If I had to guess, that’s probably going to end up pretty prescient, too.
Speaking as someone who went to see “Swordfish” — with, as I recall, Sean Vivier — solely to see Halle Berry’s breasts, allow me to just say:
Dude, did you see Halle Berry’s breasts?
Oh, and for the record, the remnants of the “Lieberman Democrat” in my increasingly liberal brain are demanding that I point out that, in fact, we have not exactly followed Gabriel’s directive. Not at all, in fact. What was the quote again?
“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.”
If executing American tourists is supposed to lead to “tactically nuk[ing] an entire city,” surely 9/11 would have justified — by Gabriel’s logic — sending Afghanistan back to the stone age with multiple high-yield nuclear bombs. Yet in fact, we did nothing of the sort. Instead we waged a targeted war that aimed to take out the Taliban and Al Qaeda while, as much as possible, sparing the civilian population. There have, of course, been countless civilian deaths, and we can certainly argue over whether this or that tactic/strategy/action (or the entire Iraq War, say) was wise or moral or what-have-you. But it cannot reasonably be claimed that the overarching nature of our response has been to simply, deliberately pound the civilian population of either Afghanistan or Iraq (which was not really a response to terrorism as such, but that’s a separate debate) into submission, thus “mak[ing] terrorism so horrific that it becomes unthinkable to attack Americans.” If anything, you can perhaps argue that what we’ve done is the worst of both worlds: we’re killing too many civilians to successfully execute a relatively humane, non-genocidal, nation-building / hearts-and-minds sort of strategy, but not killing enough civilians to successfully execute a Gabriel-esque strategy. Not that I would ever endorse or condone the latter course of action, of course. It’s unthinkable. But the point is, we aren’t doing it — not even close.
I’m with you on the torture thing, though.
Yes, thank you Brendan for bringing fact checking what was my deadly serious article. Journalism triumphs again.
Of course you are accurate. I mean I could go all, “Terrorists took this many lives and we in return have taken this many more” but I think we both know that’s not really the idea here. We did not go the Gabriel route, although there are plenty of “pundits” rhetoric that still sound very very close to what he utters.
Some folks might argue that Israel is attempting a Gabriel-esque strategy as evidenced by the rather harsh conditions endured by those living in Gaza. Not to the extreme, of course, not everyone in Gaza is dead, but that place is apparently pretty close to hell on earth.
This got me thinking about the Second Intifada, specifically, did it end? According to Wikipedia, it didn’t end, but the seemingly constant stream of stories about blown-up buses has ended. Why?
Better security? Israel surely had very tight security before the Intifada began in 2000. Tighter restrictions on Palestinians? Palestinians weren’t all that free in 2000. Or was it the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the only state actor who could get away with financing the bus suicide bombers?
As I understand it, Saddam was paying the families of those bus bombers upward of $30,000 for their efforts. If you live in Gaza on less than $1 a day, $30,000 is almost 100-years’ income. Who has insurance like that?
I’m sure there are more than a handful of anti-Zionists who would happily put up a couple million to buy 100 bus bombings in Israel. But Saddam was the only one who not only had a million person army to defend him from consequences, but also a rogue status in the world community that made any additional sanctions less material.
The key insight is that a terrorist is not a state actor, he is motivated by whatever he perceives will improve his life or further his interests. If you’re going to follow the Gabriel strategy, you better literally turn your enemy’s land into a parking lot.
Just making them poorer or more desperate only reduces the cost of “garden variety” terrorism back at you.
Agreed, Tim… Sean Hannity is basically Gabriel.
While I have not seen the movie yet, and, as such, cannot make the direct comparisons, I *can* and will challenge the implication of sole culpability of Israel …
How many days has it been since the most recent rocket attack from Gaza into Israel ?
Those in control of Gaza cannot even act sufficiently peacefully to have Egypt re-open its border with Gaza …
Perhaps if those in control of Gaza could choose to spend their resources on building up the self-sufficiency of Gaza, rather than trying to destroy Israel, the situation might resolve itself peacefully …
Brendan – would *you* want those who control Gaza currently to be your neighbours on the other side of that fence from which you so recently removed Xmas/Seasonal/holiday lights ?
I apologize for such a delay in posting; I just websearched the thread for a sequel to Swordfish after today’s government warning to Americans traveling in Europe due to Al Qaida plots against American tourists.
This one-to-one, tit-for-tat response to terrorism can NEVER work. It defies the laws of animal behavior, and human nature (especially the laws that apparently govern Islamist behavior) to demonstrate ANY weaknesses eg;basic concerns for human life, respect for other religions), and expect cessation of terrorist acts. Our consciences will only contenance a gradual escalation in response to increasing bold and reprehensible actions. This is essentially prolonging misery; essentially like messing around with metastases, instead of definitively dealing a deathblow to the primary cancer (loose analogy).
When would-be terrorists realize that terrorist acts will result NOT in getting to Allah, paradise, & 72 virgins, and NOT achieving their goals of a global kaliphate; When they witness the gathering of the remains of prior terrorists admixed with pork, and the terrorists’ families tortured, killed, and equally dessacrated and posted on the web; When they see that the response to addition violence on their part will be the incremental erasure of their holy sites; When they witness entire Muslim cities turned into dust in an instant; then MAYBE the ancient survival mechanisms will emerge, and they will desist in their continued provocations. I hope that these potential Swordfish type scenarios will prove unnecessary. However, there are countless civilizations who did not heed the calls of natural selection, and are extinct. The U.S. is being provoked. So is Russia, China, Israel, India, all of Christianity,such that this is a real possibilty. Even a non-state group of black-ops with secret funding can do this; it’s not a stretch.