'The Hummingbird Project': Great Performances From A Strong Cast Can't Save This Messy Film [Review]

Tonally schizophrenic and narratively challenged, “The Hummingbird Project” has pieces of a good movie, yet struggles to assemble them properly. Juggling family drama, corporate espionage, and the very nature of life and death itself, the film rushes from one theme to the next with the blistering speed of an Indy 500 driver delivering pizzas. And while a number of fantastic performances elevate the film, the drag of the script’s unfocused burdens keeps it from truly taking off.

The basic conceit of the story involves tech bro cousins Anton (Alexander Skarsgård) and Vincent (Jesse Eisenberg), who have an ambitious plan to streamline data transmission via a cross-country fiber-optic cable run. The idea is that their cable will allow their clients to get information milliseconds faster than the competition, which in turn would help them to get a jump on stock market trades before price fluctuations go into effect. Without the capital to finance their venture, or the rights to the land through which the cable will be run, the pair have to hustle some, yet they appear to be up to the task.

As the cousins network with contractors, landowners, and investors, it becomes clear that Anton and Vincent are betting on catching a few breaks along the way. The code needs to be written to accomplish their goal, and several different practical hurdles remain in front of them. For a moment, it seems like the movie will concern itself with the resolution of these obstacles, yet the second act splits the narrative’s focus to instead pivot to a micro character study. For example, Anton is eccentric, maybe on the Autism spectrum, while Vincent is dealing with a health issue, adding complications to a movie that is already riddled with them.

Oh, and there’s also an important side-plot about Anton and Vincent’s old boss, Eva (Salma Hayek), a telecom CEO who wants to beat the guys at their own game and ruin them in the process. Moving from A-plot to B-plot to C-plot from moment to moment, “The Hummingbird Project” struggles to maintain any kind of flow as it bounces between stories and genres.

It’s enough to give a person whiplash and feels like a problem of vision. Kim Nguyen directed “The Hummingbird Project” and is also the sole credited writer. All of his narrative elements do indeed connect, yet they collide with one another both narratively and tonally, keeping the audience guessing about what kind of movie this is. Is this a comedy, a suspense thriller, a drama, a character study, or a caper yarn? The answer, it seems, is all of the above. And in trying to be everything, the film fails to be much of anything.

The script spends too much time creating quirks for Anton and Vincent when it should be establishing a history for them that encourages investment in their scheme. It’s like selling a house based on the paint job: it might catch your eye for a moment, but it’s impossible to formulate an opinion based on such surface notes. As “The Hummingbird Project” proceeds, with Anton and Vincent scrambling to keep their project afloat while their lives unravel, drama keeps unfolding without a stable foundation upon which it can be built.

The most underserved component of the script in this regard is Eva, who is set up as an imposing foil of Anton and Vincent yet is never established with any quantifiable identifiers. To wit: why are people afraid of her? About halfway into the movie, she does indeed flex enough to establish why she is a threat, but leading up to that point, there’s nothing. A quick one-minute story between characters about the way she ruined a competitor’s life would have established her villainous bona fides and provided some level of urgency, yet “The Hummingbird Project” doesn’t offer this.

Even so, Hayek does good work with the material she’s given, as does Eisenberg in a very controlled performance that is at the center of the narrative. It’s Skarsgård who’s the real standout of the cast, however, playing against type as a chubby, bald, socially awkward developer who happens to be a coding wizard. His performance lives about a mile under the surface and is a breath of fresh air for an otherwise messy script. It makes one wonder what kind of movie “The Hummingbird Project” might have been had it anchored itself to the actor and reverse engineered everything else from there.

Alas, this was not to be, and what remains is a halfway interesting story with a few too many ideas and a lack of tonal cohesion. Much like the avian the picture is named after, this one flaps its wings a little too fast for its own good, burning fuel (and plot points) at a rate that forces it to work harder than it should. [C-]