The Hummingbird Project stars Jesse Eisenberg as a high frequency trader with a dream to beat his boss with his genius coding cousin at her own game by going into a high-stakes fiber-optic cable project with numerous obstacles. At last, the world of finance and construction come together as Eisenberg’s character tries to make his life meaningful by going big one last time.
I was never going to watch The Hummingbird Project in theaters. I am uncertain why some actors can remain beloved in spite of appearing in one crap movie after the other, but Jesse Eisenberg is not one of them. I have not been able to look at Eisenberg the same since his performance as Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. It was one of the worst movies and performances I have ever seen, and I am someone who can appreciate and even demand a horrible performance if done in the right spirit. Eisenberg seemed to think that he was killing it, and all he was doing was killing my good will. I can’t look at him without thinking, “He can’t act. Could he always not act, and I did not notice? He plays the same character all the time.”
I watch a lot of movies and noticed an emerging trend of casting the person who represents the evil corporate establishment as a women of color. I cannot trace the origins of this trope, but basically it allows the audience to root for the scrappy underdog, i.e. the traditional protagonist white guy. Intentionally or not, it reeks of a certain let’s get back to the real America vibe and put the right people in power. I am all for women of color getting to play heroes and villains, and it is nice to see a woman of color in a position of power, but when the reality is that evil or not, there are not many, and the majority depicted in films are evil, it becomes less about representation and more about appealing to Presidon’t’s fans, i.e. subconscious bias or suspicion of women and minority leaders, which is not the ethics of the scrappy underdog, but an appeal to regressive politics and our worst impulses. Such appeals are not countercultural, but dominant, and paying The Hummingbird Project with my time and money for that kind of fuckery is as unappealing as Eisenberg’s performance in any DC Comics film. Dreadful.
The only reason that I even put The Hummingbird Project in my queue was because I enjoy the work of the Salma Hayek, who is the villain, and Alexander Skarsgard, who is actually a solid actor and plays the cousin, which is a good thing because this film tries to hide his light under a bushel. Side note: another warning sign that the quality of the movie is going to be suspect is when the movie casts a gorgeous man then deliberately try to make him look normal. Um, just cast a normal looking actor. Who are you kidding?
So how was the actual movie? I am glad that I did not see it in theaters. It is definitely not a must see movie. I did not walk away from the experience feeling that what I saw changed me, which I think was the goal. I think that I was supposed to learn that there was more to the meaning of life than shaving the time that it takes for a hummingbird to flap a wing off a digital communication, and that relationships with people are more important so isn’t the protagonist the real winner after all? I am not wild about movies that try to get you all jazzed up about a project then abruptly turns around to morally chastise the audience for rooting for the wrong goal. Ha! Well you can’t have your cake and eat it too because I was completely uninvested in the project. I always questioned the protagonist’s assumption that he was David in this battle of wills.
Was I mad that I saw The Hummingbird Project? No, so I guess that the film accomplished something , or it was a case of my expectations were so low, and the film met them that I was mildly entertained. My instincts were completely correct about the film not really being on the side of the angels in a broader sense, but mitigated it somewhat in the characters’ interactions that I never got mad. The bar is really low! The protagonist comes from a working class immigrant family and works with minorities so he is not racist, but he totally ignores others’ racism and works around it while not calling it out. He never spends much time really reflecting on why he is so driven to oppose this specific boss and prove that he is better, but I am supposed to root for him just because. The movie never gives us a real motivation for defecting from her, and the one provided would actually be an argument for many in favor of staying. She is not incompetent. She pays him well, and spoiler alert, she actually is better than him at his job even with his secret weapons. I have some theories why he is so aggrieved and determined to be loud and wrong about being better.
When was the meeting when everyone decided that Hayek would be cast as the villain in all movies? I just want to be invited. I don’t actually have an objection. Hayek is really good at playing the villain. So good that it is kind of hard not to root for her character, which is absolutely not the point of The Hummingbird Project. I was briefly a business attorney, and I kept thinking, “Um, she is right. What makes the protagonist think that he is the underdog? He is awful.”
Also The Hummingbird Project appears to be one of those movies in which a supporting character would have made a more interesting protagonist to cheer. Anton, the cousin, is perfectly placed as the hero in the story treated like an inanimate object to be battled over by his cousin and the villain. He has no delusions of grandeur. He just enjoys his work, which is also his flaw because he credibly does not realize the broader legal ramifications of his actions. Let Skarsgard carry this movie. He delivers the most hilarious moments, and I actually was invested in his character’s journey that I got concerned as we were reaching the denouement. I do not understand how in the world of movies Eisenberg is considered a better box office lead than Skarsgard on any level-superficial, merit, resume. Seriously!?! What does Skarsgard have to do to get the lead? Maybe the script make sense if you read the book that inspired it, Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, but as it stands, it missed its mark.
The Hummingbird Project feels like it saw The Big Short and thought, “I can do that,” but no, honey, you can’t. It is worth watching if you do not mind wading through Eisenberg to get to Hayek and Skarsgard, but the story is a muddled, inconsistent average story. Visually the staging only had brief flashes of memorable moments. It is OK.