Thrillers - SWORDFISH OPENING

10th November 2008

SWORDFISH OPENING

We analysed the opening of Swordfish as a class to see how a successful thriller opening might start and what elements could be utilized by us. I thought this was a powerful introduction that showed a lot of thought and set the audience up for a lot of surprises in the narrative later. It was actually thrilling how a thriller should be. I really liked the focus pulls that made it hard to work out what the background was.
I will now include a brief intro of the plot and some of analysis of the opening sequence of SWORDFISH.

The opening sequence is a monologue that revolves around the antagonist played by John Travolta. His slick hairstyle and designer stubble tell us a lot about his social class, and he's wearing slick suit and is formally dressed up. The props tell about his personality and status and they are a cigar,cigarclipper and silver lighter. These toether indicate his wealth,and together with his voice and dialogue,shows part of his personality.

The spotlight pinpoint element unclear with cigar and his face being emphasised. The glints of rings he's wearing emphasis his wealth and higher socioeconomic background.

Then through over the shoulder shot, we see the further mis enscene and that the situation is about terrorism or crime. The man who did monologue is the head of a group of terrorists. He's against the army/police force calmly. This together with his remarks and apperance, indicates part of his personalities.

The Police are then identified by the props(gun,etc) and custome(uniform). When the man is walking through the road, the sniper scope and rifle site shows the scrutiny of police while it seems like the terrorist is quite powerful and is the one in control if the situation, which shows a subverted/inverted stereotype.





The rest of the story…
Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman) is an elite hacker who infected the FBI's Carnivore program with a potent computer virus, delaying its deployment by several years. For this, he was arrested by Agent Roberts (Don Cheadle), convicted of computer crimes and spent two years in Leavenworth. A condition of his parole is that he is forbidden from touching, much less using, a computer. His ex-wife, Melissa, has sole custody over their daughter Holly and some form of restraining order against Stanley from seeing Holly.
While Stanley is at home in rural Texas practicing his golf swing, a woman named Ginger Knowles (Halle Berry) shows up to solicit his hacking skills for her boss Gabriel Shear (John Travolta). For an initial $100,000 he agrees to meet with Gabriel. He and Ginger fly to Los Angeles, California and meet Gabriel in a night club. Gabriel pressures Stanley right-then-and-there to hack a government system in 60 seconds while at gun point and receiving oral sex. Although it was just a test (the gun was not loaded) Stanley succeeded in hacking the system, a feat that Gabriel had not anticipated.
At Gabriel's house he convinces Stanley to write a worm for $10 million that steals money from a secret government slush fund on the order of $9.5 billion. Gabriel reveals to Stanley that he works for an organization called the Black Cell that was started by J. Edgar Hoover in the 1950s, which is responsible for retaliatory attacks against terrorists who have attacked Americans. It is currently headed by Senator Reisman. Reisman discovers that the FBI has caught onto Gabriel and attempts to pull the plug. After Gabriel refuses to terminate plans Reisman attempts to have Gabriel killed, which fails. Gabriel tracks the Senator down while he is fly fishing in Bend, Oregon and kills Reisman.

Gabriel proceeds with his plan and raids the local branch of the WORLDBANC. He takes hostages and deploys Stanley's worm. After stealing the $9.5B he boards the hostages and his crew on a bus out of the bank. Gabriel demands a plane at the local airport (a hostage negotiation cliché) but it was a diversion. An S-64 Aircrane swoops down, lifts the bus, and releases it on the rooftop of a skyscraper. From the rooftop, Gabriel departs with his team in a helicopter which is shot down by Stanley with a rocket-propelled grenade. At the morgue, Stanley realizes it was more misdirection and Gabriel was not on the helicopter and "Gabriel Shear" is an alias.

The end of the film shows Ginger and "Gabriel" in Monte Carlo transferring that $9.5B into other accounts. The final scene shows a yacht being destroyed and a news anchor voice narrating that a suspected terrorist died on that yacht, althought the dvd does contain an alternate ending wherein Ginger is told in the bank that the account is already empty, alluding to the possibility that Stanley has played one final trick on them and taken the money himself.