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Swordfish
Movie poster for Swordfish
Directed by	Dominic Sena
Written by	Skip Woods
Starring	Hugh Jackman John Travolta Halle Berry Don Cheadle
Release date(s)	June 8, 2001
Running time	99 min
Language	English
IMDb profile

Swordfish (2001) (sometimes referred to as Password: Swordfish or Operation: Swordfish) is an action/thriller film. It was directed by Dominic Sena and stars Hugh Jackman, John Travolta, Halle Berry, Don Cheadle, and Vinnie Jones.

• Tagline 1: Log on. Hack in. Go anywhere. Steal everything.
• Tagline 2: Password Accepted.

Stanley Jobson is a former hacker whose conviction for computer crimes has left him forbidden to touch a computer or to see his 10-year-old daughter, Holly. Thus, when Ginger, a beautiful and alluring woman, suddenly shows up and offers him a job hacking into government computers for her boss, Gabriel Shear, Stanley is torn.

While he needs the money to fight his ex-wife in court over custody of Holly, he knows that if he's caught in his old ways, he may be put away for good. Despite the ramifications, the amount of money offered is too enticing (not to mention Gabriel's attractive women and the services they provide Stanley). He joins Gabriel's team: Ginger; a tough henchman named Marco; and others - including U.S. Senator Reisman, who is financing their operation.

Stanley sets out to hack into a government computer system to steal a secret government slush fund. Eventually Gabriel reveals that they are not simple criminals but rather are rogue agents waging a covert war against terrorism, even when the governments that originally hired them no longer support such a mission. The stolen funds would allow them unlimited resources in their covert war. The hacker must deal not only with Gabriel's lethal behavior and suspicious nature, but also Agent Roberts, the government field agent who previously arrested him and is now intent on capturing both him and Gabriel.

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• A lingering topless scene featuring Berry was controversial because rumors persist that, in the midst of filming, Warner Brothers executives offered Berry $2 million to do the scene, thinking it would boost the movie's revenue. Both Warner Brothers and Berry deny this.
• Hacker lingo is used as technobabble throughout the film. At one point, Jackman claims to have "dropped a logic bomb through the trap door." The combination of these phrases will be recognized as nonsense by even those minimally familiar with computer security. The film received criticism in the media for its inaccurate depictions of hacking^[1].
• Jackman's character works at a bank of computers that in one scene features a variation of the Matrix source code used in the 1999 film The Matrix. Film producer Joel Silver was also involved in the Matrix series.
• In that same scene, the uncredited song being played is High Voltage by The Frank Popp Ensemble. It's not on the Paul Oakenfold Swordfish soundtrack, but is available on the FPE Ride On CD.
• A copy of Neuromancer is on his daughter's bedroom floor.
• When Stanley (Jackman) is being chased by Agent Roberts (Cheadle) and his partner, the music played when they are falling down the hill is the same music as in The Lion King when Simba is being chased down a hill.
• A Finn named Axl Torvalds (Rudolf Martin) appears early in the film. His name was at first thought to be a pun on the Linux godfather Linus Torvalds. It has now been revealed that the name is actually a reference to Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose.^{[citation needed]}
• In one scene, the Finn Axl Torvalds speaks not Finnish but German (but in the German version of the film he really speaks Finnish). Additionally, he shows a German passport instead of a Finnish one in a different scene.
• The title comes from the 1932 Marx Brothers movie, Horse Feathers, in which Groucho and Chico Marx perform an elaborate routine involving the word to get into a speakeasy.
• Jackman and Berry also appear together in the X-Men film series as "Wolverine" and "Storm," respectively.
• Travolta drove a TVR Tuscan in the movie. The car has British number plates and is in a typical British configuration (right hand drive). The 'W' at the beginning of the license plate / number plate indicates that the car was first purchased between March and July 2000. These details confused many North American viewers and also Jackman's character who stated 'I can't drive this' when told to by Travolta's character.
• The boat that Gabriel and Ginger takes off from Monte Carlo in wears two large burgees on its stern, the large one with a crown of the the Royal Gothenburg Yacht Club, GKSS, in Sweden. The smaller one with three appearances of the letter 'S' of the Royal Swedish Yacht Club, KSSS.

Main article: Swordfish (soundtrack)

• Official site
• Swordfish at the Internet Movie Database
• Swordfish at Rotten Tomatoes
• Swordfish at Box Office Mojo
• Press Release on helicopter sequence from helicopter owner/operator Erickson S-64