The Hummingbird Project *** (2018, Jesse Eisenberg, Alexander Skarsgård, Salma Hayek) – Movie Review

Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgård are engaging as New York high-frequency trader cousins Vincent and Anton Zaleski who go up against their manipulative old boss Eva Torres (Salma Hayek) to try to make millions in a fiber-optic deal to drill an underground cable directly between Kansas and New Jersey.

Writer-director Kim Nguyen’s likeable and appealing trading technology comedy drama The Hummingbird Project has a plot that is as weird as its casting. Admittedly Eisenberg is cast to type as the fast-talking hustler cousin, but hardly as a cousin of an almost unrecognisable Skarsgård, who enjoys himself in the Oliver Hardy role to Eisenberg’s Stan Laurel as the buffoonish brains of the outfit. And wow does Vincent get Anton into another fine mess! This odd couple pairing does pay off, pretty much big time. Hayek is weirdly cast as the powerful, stop-at-nothing trader, but she scores well too, in what is a vivacious star support turn.

Building an underground fiber-optic cable has got to rate as one of the strangest plots in any movie, and, against the odds, Kim Nguyen more or less pulls it off, making the high-stakes digital world, fiber-optic cable, High Frequency Trading and measuring in milliseconds interesting, almost fascinating. But, boy, does this film ramble, in a kind of ramshackle shaggy dog story. It veers and teeters as it goes along, including the endless digressions and irrelevancies that characterise shaggy dog story. But it does get there in the end, and entertain and involve as it goes along.

The ending is the typical shaggy dog story let-down too. Kim Nguyen has told his story and seems to have no idea where or how to finish it. But that is exactly how he wants to end it. You may or may not be satisfied but you should be entertained.

I have to say I could have done without the shock cancer subplot. I nearly gave up when this started. But I’m glad I didn’t, as Kim Nguyen somehow manages to pull that in too. The director even manages to persuade us that he might be telling a true story, though he has confirmed that the film’s story is fictional.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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