| 88 |
Baltimore Sun
A souped-up roadster of a film, a relentless action flick that looks great and moves with more grace and speed than seems possible.
|
| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
A good movie? Hardly. But more than enough to pass a dog day afternoon.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Sun-Times
It's skillfully mounted and fitfully intriguing, but weaves such a tangled web that at the end I defy anyone in the audience to explain the exact loyalties and motives of the leading characters.
|
| 63 |
Miami Herald
The liveliest and most engaging time killer to come out of Hollywood in a long while. It's junk, to be sure, but it is superbly made junk.
|
| 60 |
New Times (L.A.)
If you like stuff breaking in THX, Swordfish delivers like no other this year. Bring earplugs.
|
| 50 |
Variety
A half-absorbing, half-ridiculous techno-thriller that often goes too far in search of audience-rousing effects.
|
| 50 |
Boston Globe
A high-impact, high-powered mess that raises the bar for over-the-topness.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Reader
Ridiculous but occasionally fun.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Tribune
So fast, sleek and riveting it almost makes you expect miracles -- which never materialize.
|
| 50 |
Austin Chronicle
The action is constant, often pointless, definitely gratuitous, and breathlessly fun.
|
| 50 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
A slick, cynical, nasty piece of heist-film plotting that hides its more obvious logical gaps in techno-babble and distracting spectacles of wanton violence and big explosions.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
So much luck is pressed with an absurdly overblown finale that 60 seconds will likely be Swordfish's shelf life after a couple of noisy opening weekends.
|
| 42 |
Portland Oregonian
Jinxed itself into being nothing but an inane popcorn flick pretending to be edgy.
|
| 40 |
TV Guide
Noisy and obnoxious, this flashy action picture is so hell-bent on seeming smart that it fairly forces you to think about how fundamentally stupid it is.
|
| 40 |
Salon.com
Feels like every other action thriller we've seen in the past three years, only it's more annoying -- and, in some cases, more appalling -- because it's trying so hard to distinguish itself.
|
| 40 |
Slate
By the third big climax the audience started to get impatient with the movie's pointless zigs and zags.
|
| 40 |
Mr. Showbiz
Swordfish is exactly the kind of nominally high-octane actioner that breeds legions of apologists who will encourage you to "check your brain at the door" before seeing it.
|
| 40 |
New York Magazine
Another in a long line of middling movies for Travolta, who must have been so stunned to regain his stardom with "Pulp Fiction" that he hasn't stopped working since.
|
| 38 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
It's hard to say with certainty whether it's insufficient plot or insufficient interpretation that's responsible for Travolta's waxwork performance.
|
| 38 |
New York Daily News
Not all cartoon violence; there's cartoon nudity, too. Berry was paid a well-publicized $500,000 bonus to bare her breasts in the movie.
|
| 30 |
Village Voice
The story -- is just what fills in the gaps between slow-motion fireballs, Matrix-style frozen mayhem, and Halle Berry's notoriously undraped breasts.
|
| 25 |
New York Post
It's a film that reeks of stupidity and cynicism, one that makes you feel soiled just to have sat through it.
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Chronicle
This lurid thriller comes to life in fits and starts, and then sinks into the bog of its own cleverness once again.
|
| 20 |
Washington Post
An action opera designed to elicit Beavis and Butt-head-level appreciation.
|
| 20 |
The New York Times
Turns into a meticulously choreographed bang-by-the-numbers action fantasy that I would accuse of peddling evil if the film weren't so dumb and incoherent.
|
| 20 |
Washington Post
Nobody really cares about the plot, least of all the filmmakers.
|
| 20 |
Rolling Stone
Exhibits rank incompetence on every level.
|
| 20 |
Newsweek
Nutty paranoid thriller.
|
| 20 |
Wall Street Journal
An ugly exercise in big-budget carnage.
|
| 20 |
Los Angeles Times
A kind of dirty fairy tale in which people with nasty attitudes inhabit a trash-talking, macho world of fast cars and complaisant women.
|
| 20 |
Film.com
John, John, John -- one more bad-guy role in a bad movie and you're going to need another comeback.
|
| 12 |
Charlotte Observer
About 45 minutes into Swordfish, the picture degenerates permanently from drivel to sleaze (only a short drop).
|
| 10 |
LA Weekly
The cinema of morons made by morons for morons, Swordfish is everything you expect but worse.
|
