Rated: M
Directed by: Kim Nguyen
Written by: Kim Nguyen
Produced by: Pierre Even, Jérôme de Béthune, Fabrice Delville, Alian-Gilles Viellevoye
Starring: Salma Hayek, Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgård.
The film is named, The Hummingbird Project because the beat of a hummingbird’s wing takes less than sixteen milliseconds – the time barrier Vincent Zaleski (Jesse Eisenberg) and cousin Anton Zaleski (Alexander Skarsgård) want to break by building a fibre line from the Kansas City Internet Exchange to the New York Stock Exchange.
If they can transfer data faster than the sixteen-millisecond barrier, they can trade faster than anyone else, making millions, even billions of dollars.
The only problem is that the line needs financial backing and the line needs to be built straight one thousand miles: under 10,000 private properties, under rivers, even through a mountain made of granite located in a protected state forest.
The project is a massive undertaking with all the issues that go along with making the seemingly impossible, possible by throwing millions of dollars and brain power at any obstacle. Including ex-boss, Wall Street CEO, Eva Torres (Salma Hayek) who doesn’t like betrayal (the cousins quitting and taking their idea with them) from Anton, the technical genius she cared for, who’s obviously on the spectrum and Vince, the cousin she hired so Anton could have a pet.
She has her own project.
Vince and Anton must beat their vengeful ex-boss and her line of microwave towers otherwise the fibre line becomes pointless.
It’s a David and Goliath fight to the finish with pipeline engineer Mark Vega (Michael Mando) asking Vince, ‘We’re David?’ To him it sounds like Goliath against Goliath.
The film is based on the true story Michael Lewis published, Flash Boys (2014): the fight between Spread Networks, which built an 827-mile fibre cable from Chicago to New York, and a line of microwave towers.
An idea so crazy it’s got to be true (as they say).
There’s something satisfying in seeing a large project come together – the technically savvy Anton great fun to watch; he’s the genius coder who just wants to buy a country house for his family to get away from people, AKA ‘morons’.
Alexander Skarsgård shows his versatility in the role of a receding programming nerd, the character’s single-mindedness, hilarious – although the dance scene I’m pretty sure was a copy of Tom Cruise in his role as Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder (2008).
All the roles were well-cast, Salma Hayek showing real bite as the powerful CEO and financial guru – she’s just as good at her job as the geniuses she hires to work for her.
And there’s more to the story than data transfer, problem solving and making money – this is a life-defining project for Vince. This is about the mystery of life and what he’ll find at the end.
I enjoyed watching this film on many levels. And it looks good on the big screen, with falling snow, frozen in time; walking over a forest of pine trees like they’re moss covering the ground as thought rises above the project of building this line and seeing the idea and drive to finish as more than the project itself.
An intelligent film with a bit humanity thrown in the mix.