Swordfish: Not the Typical Action Packed Thriller.
In the article "Creating the Myth," the author Linda Seger tells us what makes a good movie a great movie. Seger points out the hero myth that is portrayed in most movies in one way or another. The hero myth depicts what everyone wants or would like to think is part of his/her daily lives. Whether each of us lives our lives as hero's do it does not matter, we like to think that we in one way or at one time live the life of a hero. Seger tells us that all great films have a hero myth behind them that usually starts with the hero living a normal life much like the whole of society. The movie Swordfish depicts the hero myth very well, though it doesn't go about this in the most conventional way that is usually done with movies. Swordfish is a high intensity action film with both patriotic and patriarchal heroes at its center point. .
The movie begins with Gabriel talking about the crappiness of Hollywood's filmmaking. We only realize what's going on when he is done talking and gets up to leave. He has many guns pointed at him and he has a trigger to a bomb in his hand. It becomes apparent that this is a hostage situation right away. Then after this intriguing beginning the movie jumps back to the beginning four days earlier, explaining how we got to this point of the movie. This is where we meet Jack, he is an ex-computer hacker, who is trying to straiten his life out and get custody of his daughter. His now ex wife has remarried a man who makes pornographic videos for a living. His ex-wife is an alcoholic and terrible mother who has custody of their daughter. Jack is willing to do anything he can to get custody of his daughter, even if he has to become a computer hack again and risk going back to jail. This is where Gabriel comes into the picture. He needs a computer hacker, the best, to get into a bank to steal money. Gabriel will use this money to fund his secret organization that fights terrorists.