Swordfish at Australia

Swordfish is one bad movie. When I say bad, I mean not good. Hugh Jackman as a hacker is just unconvincing. Halle Berry might look hot, but she can't act. As for John Travolta, you can take him out of Face Off or Pulp Fiction, dump him straight into this movie, and you wouldn't know the difference. The scriptwriters tried to spice up the plot with double crosses and sudden change of plans, but it's all too contrived. Halle Berry claims to be an undercover DEA agent, and was later killed off by John Travolta. There's no need to do this as Hugh Jackman never trusted her anyway. And Hugh Jackman can't possibly crack a secure code in 60 seconds given that he was using a stranger's laptop with a gun on his head and a woman's mouth on his other head.

The only nice part of the movie was John Travolta's escape from the bank. His gang gets on a bus on their way to the airport, and all the cops are on their tail. A helicopter swoops down and airlifts the bus to the rooftop of a skyscraper, where they make their escape using another helicopter. Hugh Jackman gets there in time and shoots down the helicopter using a bazooka which happens to be there. End of story. Or is it?

In keeping with the Hugh Jackman theme, we watched Australia at WHQ's place. It was so bad even WHQ was bored. This is definitely not the story of Australia. If this movie is supposed to be the saviour of the Australian tourism industry, then we're in deep trouble. The problem with the movie is that everything's so superficial and the plot too mixed-up. You have King Carney stealing Sarah Ashley's cattle and sabotaging her, so she'll be forced to sell Faraway Downs to him. Nullah's grandfather King George was being blamed for the murder of Sarah's husband, but it was actually someone else. Sarah and Drover and company were driving 1500 cattle across the outback when they had a stampede and later a water shortage. The Japanese attacked Darwin and Drover had to go and save the kids "adopted" by the mission. Then there's the romance angle between Sarah and Dover. So predictable!