Lately, there have been quite a few films based on real companies and / or events that happened in the country. The newest one is based on a tech company in Swiped. Similar in tone and  feel of The Social Network, this film is about apps. Specifically dating apps. Dating apps have historically been run by men because of their optics. This is about a woman and her drive to succeed in a male driven industry. She found out the hard way that being the only woman in the room wasn’t easy. I think these kinds of films are interesting because they shed some light on things no one has heard of before. 

Whitney Wolfe Herd (Lily James) is a go-getter. She has the drive to succeed and needs someone to believe in her. She finds that person in Jonathan Levine (Ben Schnetzer) who owns a tech company who develops apps. She intrigues him, and he gives her a job to help develop a new dating app. She and the team at the startup helped create Tinder. A dating app for men and women looking for the right person.They need things that are compatible, and so the feature of swiping left or right is created. Like all financially successful companies, people get greedy and feelings get hurt. This is one of those stories.

Lily James is a great actress who has done it all in her career thus far. She played Cinderella in the live action Disney remake. She played Pamela Anderson in Pam & Tommy. She sang and danced in Mama Mia: Here We Go Again and was the girlfriend of a getaway driver in Baby Driver. She does a great job playing this woman in a male dominated tech industry during the onset of the #metro movement. This is probably the most mainstream film in her career. Playing real people like this helps to give an actress more relatability. I’m sure many who see this film will relate to it on many levels. Considering it’s based on true events. James has picked another terrific role for herself.

I’ve seen my share of films that deal with some form of sexual or verbal abuse in one form or another. Men have abused women for centuries. It wasn’t until the #method movement happened about a decade or so ago that they started doing something about it. Men were starting to be held accountable for their misbehavior. Sexual, verbal, or otherwise. This is another story where a woman gets the best of men doing her wrong. It makes me feel good seeing these types of misogynistic men get their just due. If men would just see women as equals in so many different ways, then a lot of these problems wouldn’t have occurred. This film, based on real events, even though names and so forth, have been changed is another great example of a movie doing the real story. It’s based on some justice.

The cast in this movie is good with a few names most people would recognize in smaller roles. Both Jackson White and Ben Schnetzer play the co-founders of Tinder, and they are good as the protagonists of the story. Specifically White who was a nasty character. Den Stevens once again has a different accent than his own British accent as the founder of a different tech company that enlists the services of James’ character in the second half of the film. He’s doing a Swedish or Norwegian accent, I believe, if I’m not mistaken. He’s good as always. Dillon Mulroney, Clea Duvall, and Myha’la are also in here with smaller roles but impactful ones for the context of the story. This cast is serviceable, but it’s James that is the clear standout in this film.

The filmmaking style of Rachel Lee Goldberg based on a script by her and Bill Parker is good as well. They move through this story very quickly and exceptionally well. They throw around words like NDA and other tech jargon like they are easy for viewers to digest. I got lost in some of the various meetings where different tech talk was thrown around. This kind of word play is important to determine what this movie is talking about. The meetings were well shot, and the quick editing mirrored the fast-paced story. It was a good idea not to get mired too much in all the mumbo jumbo that is brought up quite often. 

Swiped is another casuitary tale of men versus women and one not wanting the other to succeed. The overall overarching storyline of the #metoo movement reared its ugly head once again. James does a great job in a cast full of good performances.  She is clearly one of the best actors of her generation working right now. The story was good because it didn’t get mired in too much tech talk. It was more about the characters and their struggles with one another. This film proves once again that you can’t keep a good woman down. These days no one can or should for that matter.

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen