Based on the eponymous novel by Sandro Veronesi, The Hummingbird Movies Reviews Cast & Release Date follows a man through his life. From childhood to death, he experiences a range of events and relationships, all based on the strength of memories.
Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard star as cousins Vinny and Anton who want to build a fiber-optic pipeline from Kansas City to New York that will connect them to the stock exchange one millisecond ahead of anyone else.
Jesse Eisenberg
Jesse Eisenberg and an unrecognizable Alexander Skarsgard lead a financial thriller so odd you won’t believe it’s not based on a true story. It’s called “The Hummingbird Project,” and it features a pair of cousins who ditch their jobs on Wall Street to try and lay a fibre-optic tunnel that will tap stock market data a millisecond faster.
In director Kim Nguyen’s ludicrous financial caper, Vincent (Eisenberg) and Anton (Skarsgard), cousins of Russian descent from New York, leave their high-frequency trading jobs to build a fiber-optic cable from Kansas to New Jersey that will connect them to the stock exchange one millisecond faster than anyone else. It’s a scheme that could make them millionaires.
Eisenberg is at his best, his fast-talking energy bolstered by a more stoic performance when Vincent becomes ill. But a balding Skarsgard, who has spent time playing wife-beaters, vampires and rapists, is the most surprising. As the nervy coder who has the autistic impulses to burrow, Skarsgard is a welcome contrast to Eisenberg, whose high-energy persona feels too similar to that of Zuckerberg in “The Social Network.”
Alexander Skarsgard
Despite its esoteric subject matter, writer-director Kim Nguyen’s The Hummingbird Project is surprisingly human, both in its approach and in its performance. Having crafted a number of smartly entertaining films, Nguyen has a knack for navigating the nuances of the story he’s telling, combining high-contrast storytelling with amiable performances and deft pacing.
Eisenberg and Skarsgard play cousins Vincent and Anton Zaleski, who ditch their jobs at a Wall Street trading firm and embark on a scheme to lay a fiber-optic cable between Kansas City and New York that can transmit information milliseconds faster than its competition. That would allow them to get a jump on the stock market and make billions.
Skarsgard, as a chubby, bald, socially awkward coder named Anton, is the star of the show. His performance lives about a mile under the surface of the story and is a breath of fresh air compared to the rest of this often uneven, often inane film.
Salma Hayek
As a former trader, Salma Hayek is a natural fit for the character of Eva Torres. She’s a high-powered businesswoman with an imperious personality who uses her power to beat Vincent and Anton at their own game.
Writer-director Kim Nguyen (War Witch) tells a smartly entertaining story about two cousins who decide to ditch their jobs on Wall Street trading firms and work together to build a fiber-optic pipeline directly between a data warehouse in Kansas and the New York Stock Exchange that would shorten transaction times by milliseconds.
Their ambitious scheme is thwarted when their intrepid boss snatches the opportunity to take them down in a nasty retaliation for their quitting her firm.
While the film is often a genuinely enjoyable watch, it also feels like it’s missing a crucial element. It’s a shame, because Eisenberg, Skarsgard and Hayek are all superbly good. But, for all that, the film’s moralism weighs it down.
Michael Mando
Kim Nguyen’s The Hummingbird Project is a high-flying financial drama with an intriguing premise. It tells the story of cousins Vincent (Jesse Eisenberg) and Anton Zaleski (Alexander Skarsgard) who plan to build a straight fiber-optic cable from Kansas to New Jersey, which they hope will allow them access to the stock market one millisecond faster than their rivals.
This ambitious endeavor would be impossible to carry out without an incredibly large amount of money and enormous amounts of engineering expertise. And, if it were successful, it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profit.
But a lot of that depends on the performance of the two leads. Eisenberg’s Vincent is a driven, neurotic character who wants to make a lot of money but whose health is starting to deteriorate. Moreover, he’s not only fighting against his own instincts but also against the machinations of his former employer, Eva Torres (Salma Hayek), who’s determined to beat Vincent and Anton at their own game.
