Blood, Sex, and Typing

Where have you gone, Vincent Vega? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

It's been seven years since John Travolta returned from obscurity, dancing the Batusi and extolling the virtues of the Royale with Cheese, in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Now, after overplaying the baddie in three atrocious movies -- Battlefield Earth, Lucky Numbers and now the violence-fest Swordfish -- the artist formerly known as Tony Manero needs Tarantino's guidance to get back on the righteous path.

Swordfish is a techno-thriller, which means there is a ton of indecipherable computer lingo and everybody is making a great effort to make typing look exciting. Director Dominic Sena, between this and last year's Gone in 60 Seconds, proves himself the master of incoherent adrenaline overkill with a series of chases, gunfights and explosions placed at random intervals for no discernible purpose.

The plot centers on Travolta's character, arch thief Gabriel Shear, plotting a computer-aided bank heist of $9.5 billion from a secret government stash. Aided by the curvy Ginger (Halle Berry), Gabriel enlists Stan Jobson (played by X-Men's Hugh Jackman), an ace hacker who got caught and now must stay away from computers as a condition of his parole. Gabriel dangles the ultimate carrot -- no, not Ginger (though Berry does bare her breasts, in a much-publicized scene), but a chance to regain custody of his daughter (Camryn Grimes).

The story, though, is beside the point -- because nobody is who they appear to be, and because Sena and writer Skip Woods couldn't care less anyway. All that matters is the next explosion, and how artfully it is photographed, edited and computer-composited.

The movie's opening shows where Swordfish is coming from, and where it's going. It's in the middle of the story, with a hostage crisis underway in a bank. We don't learn this immediately, because first we get to hear Shear, in the coffee shop across the street, lecturing on the poor quality of modern Hollywood product (he should talk) in comparison to classics like Dog Day Afternoon (another hostage-crisis-in-a-bank story, get it?). Then, as the Feds start to panic, they manage to get one hostage away from the rest -- but, because of the radio-controlled bomb strapped to her, she quickly explodes and sends many ball bearings flying through the SWAT team members around her. Sena lovingly captures this carnage in a 360-degree slo-mo pan, a money shot of horrific proportions.

Not even the presence of the always fascinating Don Cheadle, as a Fed on Stan's case, or Sam Shepard, as a senator dealing in covert ops, raises Swordfish from the muck of its gratuitious violence. Travolta goes over the top with his shrill villainy, clenching his teeth as he spits out the dialogue (if you got it stuck in your mouth, you'd spit it out, too). John, John, John -- one more bad-guy role in a bad movie and you're going to need another comeback.