A movie about internet speeds and the stock market. Seems like the most action packed and epic movie of the year right? Well you are actually not that far off. It’s no Marvel movie in the action sense but there are plenty of emotions to unpack in The Hummingbird Project.
The story revolves around the two characters Vincent and Anton. they both work at a high frequency trading firm, a stock broker that makes trades in milliseconds. They get an idea. A crazy idea. What if we built a straight fiber line from Kansas to New Jersey? That would save us milliseconds and essentially make us millionaires!
Alexander Skarsgård and Jesse Eisenberg makes one of their best performances to date. I am not usually one that goes for drama movies since I am a huge movie crier. Thanks to these guys performances even this movie made me cry like a little kid that dropped his ice cream on the warm pavement. The emotionality and deliverance makes all the difference and is extremely engaging.
The scenery is also something to bring up. Since it is a movie about travelling from Kansas to New Jersey it changes a lot. One day they are at a river, the next in the middle of a forest. The scenes get a sense of serenity, loneliness and beauty that is hard to come by in today’s movie business.
The music and soundscape isn’t really anything to write home about. It is actually kind of bland and I cannot recall any moment during The Hummingbird Project where I went “woah that’s some cool choices of sounds/music”. But then I do think that having too much going on soundwise would detract from the character interactions which to be honest is what makes this movie great.
All in all I had a great time watching this roller coaster of a film. I laughed, cried and at times got angry. Really all the things you need for a good drama was there. If I gave arbitrary review scores this would get a solid 9 out of then million dollars lost at the stock market. If only we had one millisecond faster speed it would be a 10.
