Swiped: Bad behavior in the tech industry

Swiped (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated TV-MA, for profanity, nude images and deplorable behavior

Available via: Hulu

By Derrick Bang

The recent wave of tech-oriented origin sagas — 2023’s Blackberry and Tetris, and their ancestors, 2015’s Steve Jobs and 2010’s The Social Network — share an obvious characteristic: They’re all about young white guys, often working in a gender-hostile environment far closer to a frat house than a business office.

 

Having arrived as Texas' Southern Methodist University with the goal of getting sorority
and franternity gals and guys to sign up for their new dating app, Whitney (Lily James,
right) and Tisha (Myha'la) wonder where to start.

On top of which, the innovators often are arrogant, socially inept sociopaths: particularly true of Jesse Eisenberg’s handling of Mark Zuckerberg, in The Social Network ... a characterization that obviously was dead-on, given the actual Zuckerberg’s subsequent loathsome behavior.

All of which makes director Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s Swiped a breath of fresh air, since it giddily traces the rise, fall and rebirth of Whitney Wolfe Herd, who at the age of 31 became the youngest woman to take a company public, and also the youngest self-made billionaire.

 

(Clever title, just in passing.)

 

While fresh-out-of-college Whitney Wolfe obviously had some character shortcomings — chiefly naïvete and an overly trusting nature — she was then, and remains now, a rigorously honorable individual who has made a career of Doing The Right Thing, particularly on behalf of women.

 

Lily James’ performance gives Wolfe just the right blend of intelligence, breathless enthusiasm, sharp entrepreneurial impulses and an impressive ability to think outside the box.

 

Along with an unfortunate level of vulnerability, and a lamentable willingness to think the best of somebody, long past the point where self-preservation instincts should have kicked in.

 

But that comes a bit later. Goldenberg’s script, —co-written with Bill Parker and Kim Caramele — begins in 2012, as 22-year-old Wolfe tries to hustle her way into a sponsorship during a gathering of tech entrepreneurs and investors. She catches the attention of Sean Rad (Ben Schnetzer), one of several innovators brainstorming concepts in the Hatch Labs “incubator.”

 

Impressed by Wolfe’s enthusiasm and innovative suggestions, Rad puts her on his Cardify start-up. That’s just one of many potential projects in the Hatch Labs sandbox, and her attention soon turns to an embryonic dating app thus far known as MatchBox: a name that Rad dislikes. Given that existing dating apps are made for — and mostly used by — fortysomethings or older, Rad wants a catchy name for an alternative aimed at twentysomethings.

 

During a tempestuous meeting that typifies the mosh pit, dog-eat-dog behavior of her primarily male colleagues, Wolfe suggests Tinder. Delighted by this, Rad makes her the app’s vice president of marketing.

 

The additional all-important innovation comes from JB (Ian Colletti), who cleverly demonstrates what will become “the swipe.”

Ambulance: Dead on arrival

Ambulance (2022) • View trailer

No stars (TURKEY). Rated R, for intense violence, bloody images and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.8.22

This may be the most annoying movie ever made.

 

It’s certainly one of the worst.

 

With his get-rich-quick bank heist gone south, deranged psychopath Danny Sharp
(Jake Gyllenhaal, left) screams at the pursuing police vehicles to "Stay back!",
while his adopted brother Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) tries to keep their speeding
ambulance on the road.

Director Michael Bay has cornered the market on high-octane junk — witness his ever-more pathetic string of noisy, soulless Transformer epics, not to mention 2019’s similarly wretched 6 Underground — but this one plumbs hitherto untapped depths of awfulness.

The English language, graced with such a vast and colorful collection of adjectives and adverbs, is insufficient to adequately explain just how deplorable this film is. (But I shall try.)

 

Chris Fedak’s bone-stupid, so-called script hasn’t a shred of credibility, and his dialogue is as limp as a dead banana. The one-dimensional acting ranges from ludicrously stoic — notably Garret Dillahunt’s somnambulant, I’ve-wandered-in-from-another-movie portrayal of LAPD tactical SIS Capt. Monroe — to over-the-top, foaming-at-the-mouth derangement (Jake Gyllenhaal, take a bow for a performance so bad, you’re guaranteed a Razzzie Award).

 

Cinematographer Roberto De Angelis relies heavily on swooping, swooshing, barrel-roll, upside-down, skyscraper-hugging drone shots guaranteed to send unprepared viewers into motion-sickness shock: all assembled and cut at hyperspeed by a team of editors — Doug Brandt, Pietro Scalia and Calvin Wimmer — who obviously laced their morning coffee with meth.

 

Note to Mr. Bay: The mere fact that you can do something with drone cameras, doesn’t mean you should. And the result sure as hell isn’t anything approaching art or craft. 

 

Not even 10 minutes into this barrage of wretched excess, I was fighting vertigo and nausea.

 

The “story,” such as it is.

 

Decorated military veteran Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), at wit’s end trying to navigate insurance restrictions, can’t get clearance for the expensive surgery required to fix his wife’s unspecified medical condition. (Of course it’s unspecified; otherwise, Fedak would have had to do actual research.)

 

Will therefore — unwisely — seeks a loan from his motor-mouthed career criminal brother, Danny (Gyllenhaal). Instead, Will gets roped into joining a motley, heavy caliber-toting crew on a “perfectly planned” heist to steal $32 million from a nearby bank.

 

Elsewhere, we meet plucky ambulance EMT Cam Thompson (Eiza González), who can “keep anybody alive for 20 minutes, but can’t keep a partner.” She trades flirty, tone-deaf banter with newly assigned colleague Scott (Colin Woodell).

 

Elsewhere, we meet patrol officer Mark (Cedric Sanders), who encourages his rookie partner Zach (Jackson White) to try for a date with a cute teller at — wouldn’t you just know it — the same bank Danny’s crew is about to hit.