July 2001 Volume 82 Number 7 "serving the protectors"
Edited by John Ballantyne

Swordfish

“There exists a world within our world. A world beneath what we call cyberspace. A world protected by firewalls, passwords and the most advanced security systems. In this world we hide our deepest secrets, our most incriminating information, and of course, a whole lot of money. This is the world of Swordfish.”

This is a dark counter-espionage action thriller about power, money, sacrifice, and breaking and entering 21st-century style.

Gabriel Shear (played by two-time Academy Award nominee John Travolta) is an ex-spy who has set his sights on a hidden cache of funds accumulated in a US Drug Enforcement Agency money-laundering scheme, code-named Swordfish. “It has just been sitting there, gaining interest,” Travolta explains. “And Gabriel thinks this money is really nobody’s money. It’s bad money, basically. So, why not take it for good use?”

To carry this off, Shear needs the services of a superhacker. Stanley Jobson (played by Hugh Jackman) is one of the two best hackers on the planet - so good, in fact, that he has succeeded in hacking into an FBI programme which was undertaking Big Brother-like surveillance on Americans. He destroyed it, thereby earning himself a prison-term and losing custody of his only daughter Holly.

Shear enlists Jobson - fresh out of prison - to help him pull off the massive heist of $6 billion of government money from the Swordfish scheme. In return, Jobson hopes to get his daughter back and a new life.

Swordfish unfolds in a world in which nothing is what it seems and every character’s allegiances are obscured. “The central question in Swordfish is what these characters are really up to and why,” says producer Joel Silver, who has brought to the screen films such as Matrix. “The circumstances are constantly in question. Who is bad and who is good?... Everything is changing and shifting and every character has shades of grey.”

Moulin Rouge

What more can be said about this film? Baz Luhrmann’s over-the-top musical extravaganza has divided the critics. SBS television’s David Stratton has praised it to the skies. But Adelaide Review’s film review Noel Purdon has panned it as “a complete failure, possibly one of the worst films ever made... the very modern cutting edge of trash.” Nevertheless audiences have been flocking to see this film. Critics notwithstanding, Nicole Kidman’s performance has been hailed as a triumph, and the soundtrack has proved a great hit.

The Limey

Terence Stamp stars as an ex-confidence man from London seeking vengeance in Los Angeles. This film is based on Steven Soderbergh’s thriller and is both comic and savage at the same time.

Elvis: That’s the Way It Is

Diehard Elvis fans will welcome the re-release a 1970 Denis Sanders film of a series of Presley concerts in Las Vagas. A bonus is the extra footage of Elvis in rehearsal during his late career.

15 Minutes

This highly-acclaimed action-thriller is about two detectives pursuing two opportunistic serial killers through the streets of New York. The killers, meanwhile, are filming their bloodthirsty spree in the hope of eventually selling their “reality” movie to the media for big dollars. How far will the media play along with these crooks to give them their 15 minutes of fame? Robert De Niro, as a celebrity cop, puts in an impressive performance. Also stars Edward Burns and Kelsey Grammar.

Series 7: The Contenders

This is a hefty swipe at so-called “reality TV”, cynical media values and the wasteland of contemporary culture. This film is satirical, brutal and comical at the same time.

Enemy at the Gates (soon to be released)

Based on the true story of the 1943 Battle of Stalingrad - the turning point of World War II - when the Soviet Red Army under Marshal Zhukov inflicted a major defeat on Hitler’s armed forces.

This film is about two snipers who do battle during the siege of the city of Stalingrad. Stars Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Ed Harris and Bob Hoskins.

Newsfront

If you have never seen this well-loved Australian classic before, don’t miss the opportunity of enjoying the re-release of this film which first came out in 1978. Through the lens of Bill Hunter’s character - newsreel cameraman Len McGuire - we get a glimpse Australia of yesteryear from the end of World War II until the arrival of television in the mid-1950s.

The Australian’s film critic Evan Williams writes: “Newsfront is... still among the three to four best films this country has produced and, if anything, it has improved with age. What for many seemed little more than a cleverly constructed nostalgic trip in 1978 now looks more like a contemplation of lost values, a film that tells us more about our history and ourselves than we are likely to gather from old newsreels.”

A brilliant screenplay by Bob Ellis and Phil Noyce.

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