Trama

A covert counter-terrorist unit called Black Cell led by Gabriel Shear wants the money to help finance their war against international terrorism, but it's all locked away. Gabriel brings in convicted hacker Stanley Jobson to help him.

When the DEA shut down its dummy corporation operation codenamed SWORDFISH in 1986, they had generated $400 million which they let sit around; fifteen years of compound interest has swelled it to $9.5 billion. A covert counter-terrorist unit called Black Cell, headed by the duplicitious and suave Gabriel Shear, wants the money to help finance their raise-the-stakes vengeance war against international terrorism, but it's all locked away behind super-encryption. He brings in convicted hacker Stanley Jobson, who only wants to see his daughter Holly again but can't afford the legal fees, to slice into the government mainframes and get the money.—Jeff Cross <blackjac_1998@yahoo.com>

Desperately trying to access information that is under lock and key inside a sophisticated computer network crammed with mountains of government secrets, and of course, money, the elegant spy, Gabriel Shear, enlists the help of ex-con computer hacker, Stanley Jobson. Now, reluctant Jobson, who wants to regain custody of his young daughter, Holly, has no other choice but to do Shear's dirty job, and help him hack into the system. However, will Jobson's sense of morals get in the way of cracking the impenetrable code?—Nick Riganas

A renowned international hacker Axl Torvalds is intercepted by border security while entering the United States. Senator Jim Reisman is worried that Axl will be traced back to him, and instructs his minions to "take care" of the situation.

Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman) is an elite hacker who infected the FBI's Carnivore program with a potent computer virus, delaying its deployment by several years. For this, he was arrested by Agent Roberts (Don Cheadle), convicted of computer crimes and spent two years in Leavenworth. A condition of his parole is that he is forbidden from touching, much less using, a computer. His ex-wife, Melissa (Drea De Matteo), has sole custody over their daughter Holly and some form of restraining order against Stanley from seeing Holly (Camryn Grimes).

While Stanley is at home in rural Texas practicing his golf swing, a woman named Ginger Knowles (Halle Berry) shows up to solicit his hacking skills for her boss Gabriel Shear (John Travolta). For an initial $100,000 he agrees to meet with Gabriel. He and Ginger fly to Los Angeles, California and meet Gabriel in a night club. Gabriel pressures Stanley right-then-and-there to hack a government system in 60 seconds while at gun point and receiving oral sex. Although it was just a test (the gun was not loaded) Stanley succeeded in hacking the system, a feat that Gabriel had not anticipated.

At Gabriel's house he convinces Stanley to write a worm for $10 million that steals money from a secret government slush fund to the order of $9.5 billion. Gabriel reveals to Stanley that he works for an organization called the Black Cell that was started by J. Edgar Hoover in the 1950s, which is responsible for retaliatory attacks against terrorists who have attacked Americans. He also privately discovers Ginger is a DEA agent working undercover and is further surprised to discover a corpse that resembles Gabriel.

After taking Holly home from school, Stanley discovers he is being followed by FBI agent J.T. Roberts (Don Cheadle), who had previously arrested him. Roberts, though monitoring Stanley, is more interested in Gabriel as he does not appear on any government database, and after learning that another hacker, Axl Torvalds (Rudolf Martin), was killed by Gabriel's men, warns Stanley to be cautious. Stanley opts to secretly code a backdoor in his hydra that reverses the money transfer after a short period.

Meanwhile, Senator Jim Reisman (Sam Shepard), who oversees Black Cell, discovers that the FBI has caught onto Gabriel and attempts to pull the plug. After Gabriel refuses to terminate plans Reisman attempts to have Gabriel killed, which fails. Gabriel tracks the Senator down while he is fly fishing in Bend, Oregon and kills Reisman.

Stanley delivers the hydra to Gabriel and leaves to see Holly, only to find that Gabriel kidnapped her and framed him for Melissa's murder alongside her husband and porn producer. Stanley is forced to participate in a bank heist to get Holly back.

Gabriel proceeds with his plan and raids the local branch of the WORLDBANC. At the site of the heist, Gabriel and his men storm a branch and secure its employees and customers as hostages, fitting each of them with ball-bearing-based explosives similar to Claymore mines. Gabriel has 22 hostages, each wrapped with 20 pounds of C-4 explosives and 15 pounds of stainless-steel ball bearings. On their necks are radio frequency electronic dog collars. If the hostages move out of the branch, the dog collars will act as detonators and trigger the bomb.

When police and FBI surround the branch, Gabriel takes Stanley to a nearby coffee shop across the street to meet with Roberts. The entire time Gabriel is surrounded by a SWAT team, but Gabriel knows he is safe till he has the hostages in the bank in his custody, as he has the detonator in his hands.

Gabriel spends the time discussing the film Dog Day Afternoon and the nature of misdirection. Stanley says that in a movie the bad person cannot win and one way or another, the villain had to go down. Once back in the bank, Gabriel has one of his men escort a hostage to demonstrate the situation where a sharpshooter kills the man. As other agents pull the hostage away from the bank, the bomb detonates (as Gabriel had designed it) and devastates much of the street.

Gabriel instructs Stanley to launch the hydra and turns Holly over to him once completed. However, the back door triggers before they can leave the bank, leading to Stanley being recaptured while Holly is rescued. Gabriel threatens to kill Ginger, whom he knows is a DEA agent unless Stanley re-siphons the money back to a Monte Carlo bank. Although Stanley complies, Gabriel shoots Ginger. Gabriel and his men load the hostages onto a bus and demand a plane wait for them at the local airport, but while on route, the bus is lifted off by a Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane and carried across the city. The bus is then deposited on the roof of a skyscraper, where Gabriel deactivates the bombs and attempts to escape with his surviving men on a waiting helicopter. Stanley shoots down the helicopter using a grenade launcher that Gabriel's men had left on the bus.

Roberts takes Stanley to verify a corpse they found, believing Gabriel was a Mossad agent. There is no record of a DEA agent named Ginger Knowles, and her body was not found. Stanley recognizes the corpse as the one he discovered earlier and realizes that the whole scenario was a deception.

Ginger was wearing a bulletproof vest and was working with Gabriel all along, who escaped via a different route. Despite Stanley not telling the police that Gabriel and Ginger are still alive, Roberts arranges for Stanley to have full custody of Holly, where they depart to places elsewhere.

In Monte Carlo, Gabriel and Ginger withdraw the stolen money and later watch as a yacht at sea explodes. A news report later reveals the destruction of the yacht, carrying a known terrorist, as the third such incident in weeks.