thriller
Thriller may refer to:
* Thriller (genre), a broad genre of literature, film and television
** Thriller film, a film genre under the general thriller genre
Comics
* ''Thriller'' (DC Comics), a comic book series published 1983–84 by DC Comics i ...
drama
Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...
film about
high-frequency trading
High-frequency trading (HFT) is a type of algorithmic financial trading characterized by high speeds, high turnover rates, and high order-to-trade ratios that leverages high-frequency financial data and electronic trading tools. While there is no ...
Kim Nguyen
Kim Nguyen is a Canadian film director and screenwriter, best known for his 2012 film ''War Witch (Rebelle)''. The film was the top winner at the 1st Canadian Screen Awards;Pierre Even at Item 7. It stars
Jesse Eisenberg
Jesse Adam Eisenberg (; born October 5, 1983) is an American actor, writer, and director. He has received List of awards and nominations received by Jesse Eisenberg, various accolades, including nominations for an Academy Award, two BAFTA Award ...
,
Alexander Skarsgård
Alexander Johan Hjalmar Skarsgård (; born August 25, 1976) is a Swedish actor. Born in Stockholm, he began acting at age seven but quit at 13. After serving in the Swedish military, Skarsgård returned to acting and gained his first role in t ...
Sarah Goldberg
Sarah Goldberg (born May 31, 1985) is a Canadian actress. She is best known for her role as Sally Reed in the HBO dark comedy series ''Barry'' (2018–2023), which earned her a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supportin ...
, and
Salma Hayek
Salma Hayek Pinault ( , ; born Salma Valgarma Hayek Jiménez; September 2, 1966) is a Mexican and American actress and film producer. She began her career in Mexico with starring roles in the telenovela ''Teresa'' (1989–1991) as well as th ...
.
It had its world premiere at the
2018 Toronto International Film Festival
The 43rd annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from September 6 to 16, 2018. In June 2018, the TIFF organizers announced a program to ensure that at least 20 percent of all film critics and journalists given press accreditation to ...
on September 8, 2018. It was released in the United States on March 15, 2019, by
The Orchard
The Orchard may refer to:
* The Orchard (company), American music and entertainment company
* The Orchard (band), Canadian country music duo
* ''The Orchard'' (Lizz Wright album), 2008
* ''The Orchard'' (Ra Ra Riot album), 2010
* The Orchard (t ...
The film opens as stockbroker Vincent Zaleski pitches Bryan Taylor on investing in a fiberoptic cable from Kansas electronic exchange to the
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...
high-frequency trading
High-frequency trading (HFT) is a type of algorithmic financial trading characterized by high speeds, high turnover rates, and high order-to-trade ratios that leverages high-frequency financial data and electronic trading tools. While there is no ...
(HFT) operation. Taylor buys into the idea. Meanwhile, Vincent and his cousin Anton Zaleski are still employed by Eva Torres, where Anton programs trading software. Eva is also working on several ideas for HFT. Soon enough, Anton and Vincent quit, making Eva furious. She insists that any code Anton created for her firm belongs to it, and even the thoughts in his head might be proprietary.
Vincent has hired Mark Vega to oversee the building of the fiberoptic cable tunnel. Vincent occasionally helps Mark purchase or lease the rights to land in order to make the cable as straight as possible. Any deviation in the shape of the tunnel will create delays in the trade. Anton is hard at work trying to shave 1 millisecond off the time it takes to front-run orders to NYC. Currently, his software will do it in 17 milliseconds, which is not fast enough to be competitive. It needs to be at most 16 milliseconds to be a viable enterprise for Taylor's firm.
Eva finds an NYU student who has written a paper about microwave pulses to effect HFT. She hires him, and starts the process of building a series of towers to make trades with microwaves. As Vincent struggles with acquiring land, being diagnosed with cancer, and broken drill bits, Eva manages to finish her microwave towers first, and begins front-running the market.
Eva also takes revenge on Anton by having him arrested by the FBI for stock market fraud by using stolen property in the form of the software that he wrote for her company. While Anton is in jail, a software bug that Anton installed at Eva's firm is released, causing a 20 millisecond slowdown in trading, rendering her microwaves useless. She drops the charges against Anton.
As Vincent undergoes chemotherapy, Anton reveals his next idea for HFT involves neutrino messaging, and it could cut the time from Kansas City to NYC down to as little as 9 milliseconds.
Cast
*
Jesse Eisenberg
Jesse Adam Eisenberg (; born October 5, 1983) is an American actor, writer, and director. He has received List of awards and nominations received by Jesse Eisenberg, various accolades, including nominations for an Academy Award, two BAFTA Award ...
as Vincent Zaleski
*
Alexander Skarsgård
Alexander Johan Hjalmar Skarsgård (; born August 25, 1976) is a Swedish actor. Born in Stockholm, he began acting at age seven but quit at 13. After serving in the Swedish military, Skarsgård returned to acting and gained his first role in t ...
as Anton Zaleski
*
Salma Hayek
Salma Hayek Pinault ( , ; born Salma Valgarma Hayek Jiménez; September 2, 1966) is a Mexican and American actress and film producer. She began her career in Mexico with starring roles in the telenovela ''Teresa'' (1989–1991) as well as th ...
Sarah Goldberg
Sarah Goldberg (born May 31, 1985) is a Canadian actress. She is best known for her role as Sally Reed in the HBO dark comedy series ''Barry'' (2018–2023), which earned her a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supportin ...
as Masha
* Anna Maguire as Jenny
* Frank Schorpion as Bryan Taylor
*
Johan Heldenbergh
Johan Heldenbergh (born 9 February 1967) is a Belgian actor, playwright, screenwriter, theatre director and film director. He gained international fame by starring in films, including ''A Day in a Life'' (2007), ''Moscow, Belgium'' (2008), ''The ...
Jesse Eisenberg
Jesse Adam Eisenberg (; born October 5, 1983) is an American actor, writer, and director. He has received List of awards and nominations received by Jesse Eisenberg, various accolades, including nominations for an Academy Award, two BAFTA Award ...
and
Alexander Skarsgård
Alexander Johan Hjalmar Skarsgård (; born August 25, 1976) is a Swedish actor. Born in Stockholm, he began acting at age seven but quit at 13. After serving in the Swedish military, Skarsgård returned to acting and gained his first role in t ...
had joined the cast of the film, with
Kim Nguyen
Kim Nguyen is a Canadian film director and screenwriter, best known for his 2012 film ''War Witch (Rebelle)''. The film was the top winner at the 1st Canadian Screen Awards;Pierre Even served as a producer on the film, while Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Fred Berger served as executive producers, under their Item 7, Automatik and HanWay Films banners, respectively. In September 2017,
Salma Hayek
Salma Hayek Pinault ( , ; born Salma Valgarma Hayek Jiménez; September 2, 1966) is a Mexican and American actress and film producer. She began her career in Mexico with starring roles in the telenovela ''Teresa'' (1989–1991) as well as th ...
joined the cast, followed in October 2017 by Michael Mando.
Principal photography began in Quebec in November 2017.
Release
The film had its world premiere at the
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...
on September 8, 2018, and was the opening gala at the
Vancouver International Film Festival
The Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) is an annual film festival held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, for two weeks in late September and early October.
The festival is operated by the Greater Vancouver International Film Fest ...
later that month. Shortly after,
The Orchard
The Orchard may refer to:
* The Orchard (company), American music and entertainment company
* The Orchard (band), Canadian country music duo
* ''The Orchard'' (Lizz Wright album), 2008
* ''The Orchard'' (Ra Ra Riot album), 2010
* The Orchard (t ...
acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film. It had a limited release in the United States on March 15, 2019.
Factual basis
The communication systems portrayed in the film do exist.
Spread Networks Spread Networks is a company founded by Dan Spivey and backed by James L. Barksdale (former CEO of Netscape Communications Corporation) that claims to offer Internet connectivity between Chicago and New York City at ultra-low latency (i.e. speeds ...
activated their essentially straight fiber-optic cable in 2010 saving approximately over the existing route from Chicago to New York, and their journey is depicted in
Michael Lewis
Michael Monroe Lewis (born October 15, 1960) Gale Biography In Context. is an American author and financial journalist. He has also been a contributing editor to '' Vanity Fair'' since 2009, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. H ...
's book '' Flash Boys''. McKay Brothers and Tradeworx began providing microwave radio service in 2012.
Reception
Box office
''The Hummingbird Project'' grossed $371,784 in the United States and Canada, and $527,253 in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $899,037.
Critical response
On review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...
, the film holds an approval rating of , based on reviews, and an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "Smart and well-acted, ''The Hummingbird Project'' marks a flawed yet undeniably intriguing addition to writer-director Kim Nguyen's filmography." On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, the film has a weighted average score of 58 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Mike McCahill of ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide ...
'' gave the film two stars out of five, stating "We get intriguing ideas, images and locations, and enough closeups of excavation equipment to enrapture plant-hire enthusiasts. With few narrative or thematic hook-ups, though, I guarantee plenty of head scratching in front of this curio". Odie Herderson of ''
RogerEbert.com
''RogerEbert.com'' is an American film review website that archives reviews written by film critic Roger Ebert for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' and also shares other critics' reviews and essays. The website, underwritten by the ''Chicago Sun-Times' ...
'' gave the movie two stars out of four, commenting "Though Nguyen is the only credited writer here, “The Hummingbird Project” feels like one of those movies where nine different people contributed to the proceedings without reading what anybody else wrote. I was ready to check out once we got to the major grab for sympathy (complete with hospital visit) that closes out the film. It's a shame because the acting is quite good here, especially an against-type Skarsgård. His Anton is rather complex and he gets one hell of a celebratory dance sequence. I identified with his little boogie-woogie; finally someone put onscreen what it feels like when your code does what it's supposed to do".
Ben Kenigsberg of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' added "“The Hummingbird Project” may be too committed to its popcorn mechanics to double as a truly brainy exposé, but it pays other dividends. Eisenberg adds unexpected shades of humanity to his lizard persona from “The Social Network,” while a bald, unrecognizable Skarsgard pulls off the difficult feat of being sympathetically antisocial as a coder driven batty by his work. As the geological, financial and personal barriers the cousins face grow increasingly absurd, the movie works up a satisfying sweat". Jonathan Dean of '' GQ'' wrote, "But in its own way, the film winds up as ''
Margin Call
''Margin Call'' is a 2011 American drama film written and directed by J. C. Chandor in his feature directorial debut. The principal story takes place over a 24-hour period at a large Wall Street investment bank during the initial stages of the ...
'' meets ''
Glengarry Glen Ross
''Glengarry Glen Ross'' is a play by David Mamet that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. The play shows parts of two days in the lives of four desperate Chicago real estate agents who are prepared to engage in any number of unethical, illegal acts ...
'' meets, yes, ''
The Social Network
''The Social Network'' is a 2010 American biographical drama film directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, based on the 2009 book '' The Accidental Billionaires'' by Ben Mezrich. It portrays the founding of social networking ...
''. And by harking back to the latter, the director has the Eisenberg we fell for. It has his twitch, but with a heart, the idea he is the smartest man in the room, but doesn't want people to know it".
Library and Archives Canada
Library and Archives Canada (LAC; french: Bibliothèque et Archives Canada) is the federal institution, tasked with acquiring, preserving, and providing accessibility to the documentary heritage of Canada. The national archive and library is t ...