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It's a new breed of filmmakers out there, and the big guns that have made the transition from MTV to the big screen include Michael Bay, Antoine Fuqua and David Fincher. But where the hell did Dominic Sena come from? Many will recognize him from Kalifornia or Gone in 60 Seconds, but for some reason I've heard his name before - I couldn't put my finger on it until I was watching MTV and noticed his named attached to tons of videos, and he was also a founding partner of David Fincher's Propaganda Films.

Swordfish is Sena's latest project, and it's obvious he's hot off of the commercial success of Gone in 60 Seconds. John Travolta stars as Gabriel, who opens the film with a terrific rant about Hollywood - "They make shit." (Speaking from personal experience, I assume.) He laments how the villains are never allowed to be the ruthless bastards that they should be, and after this 5-minute tirade, what follows is one of the most elaborate, and horrifying hostage situations ever filmed. Of course you're going, "What the hell happened?" so the screenplay wisely takes us back to the beginning of the story, where all of the principal characters are introduced.

Gabriel is a member of a top secret government agency that is designed to make the consequences of terrorism look so frightening that no one would dare attempt it again. Unfortunately for Gabriel and his silent partner Senator Reisman (Sam Shepard), the government has cut off their funding, so they need to find alternative methods to maintain their operations. Gabriel has an ingenious plan to hack into the secret funds of a defunct DEA operation called "Swordfish." The funds left in this secret DEA bank account have been untouched since the mid-1980s, and are now worth a cool $9.5 billion dollars.

To decrypt these files, Gabriel needs the best hacker in the world, and since his first choice is dead (by Gabriel's own hand), he digs up Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman) who was busted two year ago for destroying a secret government program and is now relegated to fixing oil pumps in the middle of Texas. Stanley is also estranged from his wife, who has custody of his daughter Holly (Camryn Grimes). Stanley's ex-wife is married to the porn king of Southern California. Because of Stanley's record, and her husband's money, Stanley can't get near his daughter. Gabriel, being the all- knowing, manipulative snake that he is, sends his assistant Ginger (Halle Berry) to Texas with an offer he'd be foolish to refuse. On top of all of this, Agent Robert (Don Cheadle) who had previously arrested Stanley is hot on his trail, since he's not even supposed to touch a computer.

Produced by Joel Silver and Jonathan D. Krane (Face/Off), with a screenplay by Skip Woods, Swordfish is a slick and stylish thriller and one of the better summer films I saw this year. The story moves along at a decent pace with just enough character development to make you actually care about what happens, even to the villain. This film has been the center of much controversy since September 11th because of its terrorist themes, and Blockbuster has chosen to single out this film for a new warning label system, sighting "concern for the consumer." Regardless of the controversy, Swordfish is a slick, entertaining thriller.

Video: How Does The Disc Look?

Swordfish is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen. Since Dominic Sena is once again working with his same team from Gone In 60 Seconds, Production Designer Jeff Mann and Director of Photography Paul Cameron, the visual style of the two films are very similar. There is a tremendous amount of filters employed, creating an amber or bluish-green hue to most scenes. The colors look very natural and accurate within these confines, so though I'd usually comment about the natural look of the flesh tones, there wasn't one unfiltered shot in this movie so what's the point? The colors are very well saturated, creating incredibly dark blacks, but detail is never lost, and contrast is incredibly sharp. There were no signs of digital artifacts, and the edge enhancement was kept to a minimum. Another fine transfer from Warner.

Audio: How Does the Disc Sound?

When I finally got around to seeing this film in June, the theater I went to was only a couple of good earthquakes away from demolition. (Quite sad for a theater that was once the place to see a film in my area.) The screen was cropped to about 2:1, and the sound was presented in stereo, even though the theater claimed it was surround sound. Needless to say, I was very disappointed in the film's presentation. Knowing full well that the DVD would be much better, I wasn't disappointed, and Swordfish contains a fairly aggressive but not overcooked 5.1 mix. Balance between the dialog, score and effects is done very well, though the mix is weighted towards the fronts

Some people may be disappointed with the somewhat subdued use of the surrounds, but it contains some awesome effects, especially in chapter 2, "Explosive Wrong Move," when a hostage is obliterated with C-4. After the hostage is vaporized, the film slips into a "Matrix" mode, where the camera does a 360-Degree spin through an intersection. Not only do explosions rotate through the room, the steel ball-bearings ricochet and zip throughout. Another well-mixed moment is in chapter 9, "Nearly Gone in 60 Seconds," when Stanley first meets Gabriel, in a nightclub. The low-end frequencies rock, but not to the point where your subwoofer will bottom out. If you're looking for another major action sequence to play with, I recommend chapter 18, "Hitting the Hitmen." Overall, aside from these select scenes, this is a well produced soundtrack which is surprisingly subtle and doesn't cry out, "I'm here! Look at Me! "

A French 5.1 soundtrack is also included, plus English Closed Captions and subtitles in English, French and Spanish.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

First up we have the HBO First Look Documentary, The Making of Swordfish. If you've read any of my previous reviews, you probably already know what I think of these HBO types of 15-minute featurettes. Admittedly, this isn't as bad as most First Look docs, but it still doesn't go very deep into the production of the film as I'd like. As a companion piece to the "Making of" documentary, we are granted The Effects in Focus featurette, in which I actually learned something about the making of the film. Produced and directed by Michael Meadows of New Wave Entertainment, this 8-minute piece goes in depth about the climatic bus chase through Los Angeles. It's amazing how seamlessly this sequence looks when put together, considering some of the complicated CGI effects and blue screen work involved.

Aside from the featurettes, it would have been nice to have a truly in-depth documentary about the making of Swordfish, but Dominic Sena does provides a very entertaining screen-specific audio commentary. Sena insights mainly focus on the many script revisions that occurred during the production. While the opening dialog was not altered, it was originally supposed to be a voice-over set against a black background. At Sena's request, they script was altered to the onscreen monologue which Travolta now delivers perfectly. The original screenplay also called for an extensive shoot-out at LAX instead of the more original bus chase, which is now in the film. (Also interesting was the convoluted casting of the film, Travolta was always Sena's first choice to play Gabriel. Unfortunately for Sena Travolta had already passed on the film six times, but after some tinkering with the script, and the signing of Don Cheadle, Travolta climbed aboard. While Hugh Jackman played Stanley in the finished film, he was not the first choice. (Sena had test-screened Johnny Depp and James Woods, but didn't feel they would work.)

Sena also provides a commentary for the two Alternate Endings, which were shot but scraped in favor of the finished version. Sena's reasons for altering them are very sound, but I don't want to spoil the ending of the actual film, so you'll have to see these for yourself. L:ast but not least we have the film's theatrical trailer in anamorphic widescreen.

DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the disc in your PC?

Rounding out the extras is a decent amount of DVD-ROM content on this disc. While somewhat interesting, it got to be very annoying as well. Besides the standard links to the Swordfish website and other Warner destinations, there is an interactive game to unlock Restricted Files by logging in the proper password. If you guess right, you'll find additional behind-the-scenes supplements including some brief interviews and making-of footage, as well as production notes. Unfortunately, the interface is clumsy and get the video material to launch was difficult. (Oh, and did I mention that if you're a Mac used you're out of luck as usual?)

Parting Thoughts