Butler's Cinema Scene

Jesse Eisenberg, Alexander Skarsgard

“THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT” My rating: C+ 
110 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“The Hummingbird Project” could be described as a race-against-time movie.

Two cousins risk everything to build a high-speed internet “highway” between Kansas and the East Coast, all to shave a few microseconds off the time required to send the latest stock market updates halfway across the continent.

Why bother? Because a microsecond head start on the competition — the time it takes for a hummingbird to flap its wings just once — could mean millions in profits.

Kim Nguyen’s drama is acceptable if unremarkable in most respects. It  features a vintage Jesse Eisenberg performance (i.e., arrogant nerd) and an atypical one from Salma Hayek (here toning down the sexuality to play a Wall Street shark).

Where “Hummingbird…” really shines, though, is in the work of Alexander Skarsgard, an actor who mostly has been seen as a hunky type (a charismatic vampire in “True Blood,” a predatory stepdad in “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” an abusive husband in “Big Little Lies,” a muscled tree swinger in “The Legend of Tarzan”).

Here Skarsgard plays an antisocial dweeb, a bald, soft-bellied algorithm cruncher more comfortable with his computer screen than other human beings. It’s such a startling transformation that initially he’s unrecognizable. It’s a classic case of an actor getting lost in his role.

Salma Hayek, Jesse Eisenberg

As “Hummingbird…” begins cousins Vincent (Eisenberg) and Anton (Skarsgard) are employees of a Wall Street shop run by the ruthless Eva (Salma Hayek). Like a couple of prisoners in a Dumas story, they are planning an escape.

Vincent, a cocky entrepreneur, has concluded that he can build his own information highway using brother Anton’s code-writing skills.  The two virtually quit their jobs in the dead of night, get financing from a multimillionaire (Frank Schorpion) and begin buying access to land along the route of their proposed buried fiber optic cable.

That means cajoling dubious Amish farmers and surreptitiously tunneling through mountains and swamps in protected wilderness areas.

Eva infects their team with spies and, once she realizes what they’re up to, threatens to sue the brothers over their use of proprietary info and programs Anton developed while working for her.

Vincent is defiant (midway through the film he gets a scary doctor’s report and now figures he has nothing to lose) but the vulnerable Anton — a husband and father — collapses like a folding card table. Here’s a guy who has panic attacks on commercial airplanes; the thought of prison utterly unmans him.

At the heart of the film is the question of just how crazed we should become in search of wealth.  Especially when some of that time and energy could be poured into the people who surround us.

It’s a question worth asking, but “The Hummingbird Project” only rarely delivers the dramatic goods. Still, as long as we can watch Skarsgard in dweeb/genius mode, the film keeps our interest.

| Robert W. Butler