The Hummingbird Project tells a story of a jerk of a guy Vincent Zaleski (Jesse Eisenberg) and his quant cousin Anton (Alexander Skarsgård, who is great in this role). They work in a high frequency trading room led by Eva Torres (Salma Hayek). Vincent devised a plan to use Anton's smarts and some financial funding to lay a fiber optic line from Kansas to Wall Street. Doing so will save them 1 millisecond of time over the competition. In high frequency trading, that 1 millisecond gives you an opportunity to make a trade just before the competition with 100% certainty of profiting. It may be a small amount, but with enough trades, it would be significant (I think the said they'd make about 500 million in a year).
So, with that in mind, Vincent and Anton quit their jobs, secure funding, and get to work. There ends up being two , then three, then four different obstacles. The first one is the mechanics of getting the land. Most of the movie is spent here with Vincent using his sales skills, working with various people to find ways to lay cable through water, through mountains, through Amish farmland, up hills, down valleys as fast as humanly possible. The second obstacle is Anton trying to find a way to turn the 17 millisecond trip to 16 milliseconds. 17 milliseconds is useless, 16 is gold. As the movie progresses, Vincent discovers he has stomach cancer, but no rest for the sick! And lastly is Eva, who scares Anton by saying she'll put him in jail for fraud.
As the movie progresses, Vincent is dealt problem after problem after problem, all the while with the cancer getting worse and worse. At the climax, it turns out one of Eva's newly hired quants finds an even quicker solution to the travel time. Jerk as he is, you feel bad for Vincent when he realizes it's over and he lost. All that time and aggravation, all that pain from the cancer, the cutting through nature, the legal but morally bereft loophole of going under the land of people who did not want to sell to you. All of it for nothing.
The movie was a rush that just grinded to a halt right at that moment. It ends with, I guess, some sort of lesson about slowing down or something. I think, or maybe not. If that was the lesson, well, it's negated by Eva Torres's company making tons of cash because she found a faster way.
So yeah, Skarsgård was absolutely great as Anton. Eisenberg was also great as Vincent. Yeah, maybe Vincent is a rehash of his portrayal of Zuckerberg in the Social Network. Maybe Eisenberg can only play that type of character with minor variations. But whatever the case, he played this role well.
I felt engaged throughout the movie. I can see how some may find this boring, but I enjoyed how Vincent and team dealt with issue after issue.
Here's the flaw, or set of flaws related to one thing. Vincent and Anton quit their job abruptly, basically blacklisting them from any other similar job for this business opportunity that relied on not only securing the rights to the land, but more importantly, on Anton finding out how to shave 1 millisecond off the time. Incredible risk, given Anton said he didn't know how it could be done. Moreover, he got funding of millions from someone who heard 17 ms when Anton provided the details and *knew* that was useless, but was somehow convinced by Vincent's sales talk. Really? you were convinced by what amounts to a "no, no, he meant 16ms" argument? No detailed plan? No tech specs to go over? Let's just give it to this kid I know pretty much nothing about? Moreover-over, Anton, after struggling for months to save a measly 1/10 ms determines, in a flash of insight, that the repeater tolerance means you can do with fewer repeaters, which means fewer delays? Seriously? That seems to be the most obvious thing to check! Anton said the code was already as stripped as it could be. They couldn't make the line any straighter. They can't shorten the distance. They can't change the speed of light in the cable. How would the repeaters not be the very first thing to check?!?!?
Anyway, 7/10. Nice pacing (for me), nice story, good acting, but ugh, that tech solution...
So, with that in mind, Vincent and Anton quit their jobs, secure funding, and get to work. There ends up being two , then three, then four different obstacles. The first one is the mechanics of getting the land. Most of the movie is spent here with Vincent using his sales skills, working with various people to find ways to lay cable through water, through mountains, through Amish farmland, up hills, down valleys as fast as humanly possible. The second obstacle is Anton trying to find a way to turn the 17 millisecond trip to 16 milliseconds. 17 milliseconds is useless, 16 is gold. As the movie progresses, Vincent discovers he has stomach cancer, but no rest for the sick! And lastly is Eva, who scares Anton by saying she'll put him in jail for fraud.
As the movie progresses, Vincent is dealt problem after problem after problem, all the while with the cancer getting worse and worse. At the climax, it turns out one of Eva's newly hired quants finds an even quicker solution to the travel time. Jerk as he is, you feel bad for Vincent when he realizes it's over and he lost. All that time and aggravation, all that pain from the cancer, the cutting through nature, the legal but morally bereft loophole of going under the land of people who did not want to sell to you. All of it for nothing.
The movie was a rush that just grinded to a halt right at that moment. It ends with, I guess, some sort of lesson about slowing down or something. I think, or maybe not. If that was the lesson, well, it's negated by Eva Torres's company making tons of cash because she found a faster way.
So yeah, Skarsgård was absolutely great as Anton. Eisenberg was also great as Vincent. Yeah, maybe Vincent is a rehash of his portrayal of Zuckerberg in the Social Network. Maybe Eisenberg can only play that type of character with minor variations. But whatever the case, he played this role well.
I felt engaged throughout the movie. I can see how some may find this boring, but I enjoyed how Vincent and team dealt with issue after issue.
Here's the flaw, or set of flaws related to one thing. Vincent and Anton quit their job abruptly, basically blacklisting them from any other similar job for this business opportunity that relied on not only securing the rights to the land, but more importantly, on Anton finding out how to shave 1 millisecond off the time. Incredible risk, given Anton said he didn't know how it could be done. Moreover, he got funding of millions from someone who heard 17 ms when Anton provided the details and *knew* that was useless, but was somehow convinced by Vincent's sales talk. Really? you were convinced by what amounts to a "no, no, he meant 16ms" argument? No detailed plan? No tech specs to go over? Let's just give it to this kid I know pretty much nothing about? Moreover-over, Anton, after struggling for months to save a measly 1/10 ms determines, in a flash of insight, that the repeater tolerance means you can do with fewer repeaters, which means fewer delays? Seriously? That seems to be the most obvious thing to check! Anton said the code was already as stripped as it could be. They couldn't make the line any straighter. They can't shorten the distance. They can't change the speed of light in the cable. How would the repeaters not be the very first thing to check?!?!?
Anyway, 7/10. Nice pacing (for me), nice story, good acting, but ugh, that tech solution...