Entertaining performances in unbelievable story

The Hummingbird Project, which opened the Gasparilla International Film Festival last night here in Tampa, Fla., and was released widely in theatres this week, is a feather in the cap to Montreal director Kim Nguyen, whose respectable 2012 War Witch, about child soldiers in Africa, I saw at the Windsor International Film Festival several years ago. Now, in this new Canadian-Belgian co-production, Nguyen has achieved such status he’s attracted stars like Jesse Eisenberg, Alexander Skarsgård and Salma Hayek to be part of his solely-written feature. And while this flic has its entertaining moments, mainly as a result of the amusing acting of Eisenberg and Skarsgård, and keeps the audience focused because of its madcap plot, there’s a certain unbelievability to it all. Vincent (Eisenberg) and Anton (Skarsgård) are cousins working in an elite Wall Street trading firm run by Eva Torres (Hayek), a kind of Cruella de Vil who terrorizes her staff. Vincent and Anton, tech geniuses, hatch a plot to create a faster way to game the market and consequently make millions of dollars, allowing trades to be done one millisecond (the flap of a hummingbird’s wing) faster than current computer programs. To do so they have to build a straight-line pipe for fiber optic from a computer center in Kansas, 1000 miles east to the New York Stock Exchange servers in New Jersey. This is where the plot gets downright silly and you can suspend disbelief, but really? This twosome has to acquire land on all manner of private and public property to dig the line, which would be an infrastructure nightmare for even the biggest engineering company.  And yet there’s Vincent and his underground drilling specialist pal Mark (Michael Mando) plodding through countless properties in cities, suburbs, farmland and wilderness, to obtain property owners’ consent. Given how long it takes to get any engineering project built these days it’s beyond belief these newbies would be able to do it all within a year or two. Meanwhile, Eva, who accuses the twosome of stealing her algorithms, shows up in various places to harass them. Our heroes also suffer personal trials, which makes the audience want to cheer them on even more. Eisenberg and Skarsgård are actually great in these roles and Hayek’s many fans will see her in all her navigator-glasses-spiked heels-no-nonsense splendor. But, really, The Hummingbird Project is cotton candy for the easily amused.