Takedown

First of all, let's clear up some common misconceptions.

This film isn't "Hackers 2". You will find no CGI or parachute pants here. This film is about the capture of the notorious computer criminal Kevin Mitnick who used his technical skills and ability to influence people to gain access to things he really shouldn't have been able to access.

The thing that bothers me most about this film is the computer virus that Shimo wrote. I doubt that he did, and this makes Mmitnick seem worse by stealing it. The AI doesn't exist to put that virus around now, and it didn't 3 years ago.

The film in itself is a work of genius. This is the only realistic hacker film i have ever seen. Maybe because it was based on a true story and to put spinning DNA molecules on the computer screen instead of C++ would be a load of bollocks.

The acting is great; the pace of the movie is quick, especially in the part when the FBI almost captures Mitnick for the second time. The portrayal of the FBI in this film isn't very good, when they apprehended Mitnick, they didn't go in with 20 SWAT teams!

Kudos to Ulrich for his part as Kevin Mitnick, but as for Wong, I'm very surprised, where's the glasses and the geekyness? I know where, it got lost in the writing process, to make hackers look geeky and security experts look 'ard and sexy. In actual fact, security experts are just crackers in business suits. Kevin Mitnick did no damage, but they chase after him like he mass murdered a few police departments. I suppose they can't be totally realistic, and then the film would be an hour and a half of typing, with 30 minutes of chases and arrest.

I'm just glad there were no parachute pants ^_^

Historical accuracy: 3 Acting: 6 Camera work: 4 Editing: 5 Budget: 4 Story: 6 Theme: 5 Pure entertainment factor: 6 Video quality: 5 Special effects: NA Pacing: 6 Suspension of disbelief: 3 Non-cringe factor: 5 Lack of flashbacks: 10

It's not a good movie as such. It's engaging enough with decent acting and a plot that always advances, but it's messy and cheap movie making. Firstly, I have read Mitnick's book and watched the doc. The doc had some weird scenes and was dirt cheap, but overall a good watch and the audiobook was very fun.

This is not really what happened. This is a story from a point of view of a guy who claims he caught him. He didn't of course. And while watching the movie it will be quite clear that it's nearly fully fictional. The super hacker, who is here better than Mitnick, can do no wrong. He has a hot horny blonde girlfriend, mocks political figures openly, works with FBI, has his own company it seems. He's like a superhero of sorts and Mitnick is this weird criminal hacker. A loner who was forced to leave his girlfriend as FBI was after him. His girlfriend starts dating his best friend instead. In a dating scene he mocks the woman he asked out. He acts weird and creepily and overall the great danger he presents is because he steals this super powerful program from the guy who is now chasing him. Apparently it can hack into ANY system whatsoever. FBI, airports, hospitals. Anything. Obviously this movie is nearly pure fiction and a narcissistic product.

Actually, the best scenes are the ones where we experience realistic events like Mitnick tricking his way into companies, hacking a phone to make free calls, talking about the morals of hacking, hacking the people chasing him, being easily offended. But largely the movie tries to be over the top. The camera work is shoddy and rushed, the hacking scenes cringe. Overall the plot is confusing. The guy chasing him somehow always tracks him down yet we never clearly understand how. And many scenes are plastered in. There is clearly a script and plot here yet the movie is recut by someone besides the director because much of it makes no sense with scenes just appearing and explaining very little.

It's actually watchable and semi-enjoyable. It's not boring as such and I guess one could watch it. But it looks very cheap, the plot is nonsense, and the editing makes it a giant mess. I feel like there is a great story here that could be made. Just focus on the small hacking stuff and social engineering. Keep it realistic. This is why I think some people enjoyed it enough as you could imagine how it could have been good. It's not, but at least it's not dull. There are not many hacker movies out there and most are quite horrible. This at least is perplexingly not awful. Which is something I guess.

I know all about the Mitnick story, the "Free Kevin", the story from both sides. I'm well aware how the hacking scene thinks this paints an unfair portrait of hackers. Compared to what is usually painted, this doesn't really paint them too bad. Compared to the really atrocious movie "Hackers", this does a lot better at showing what hacking is really like. You don't hack with a Mac, you hack from a PC in different ways. You get to also see the other try & true techiques of Social Engineering & Dumpster Diving. While any true hacker could point out the blatant lies in the movie (Mitnick & Shimomura never met in person until after the arrest), it was cool that the film made some clear distinctions in terminology. If this movie showed actual hacking, it would of been a snoozer. This was able to keep it a bit more interesting without making it look cheesy to the semiliterate computer user. It's funny how this won't appear in the United States, maybe the US Government is afraid of the truth about how afterwards Mitnick was stripped of his constitutional rights. Watch this film, and be entertained, but don't believe it, as most of it is really fiction.

Without going deep into the the story I can say that if you want to know about the real world under your computer and the privacy that never been out there you're In the right place. The movie Takedown will show you a small piece of hacking in the past and maybe the name "history of hacking" can be correct too.

you can find some of the items from the movie in the spy-shops around so in my opinion just for the knowledge the movie must be seen. In the movie there are some point who are too stuck ,and some time there is no point for long focus in one position. I can see by the movie the vision of the creator ,and he did understand the story and the "How" not like many times in movies without any contact to the reality ,however he failed in focusing too much on the technology and mess the option to show how really hacker feel against and from the authorities.

Enjoy

This was a movie that deserved to tank. Kevin Mitnick, a genius with computers who was a little too inquisitive for the authorities liking, has been the victim of so many abuses that it can make one's stomach turn. "Takedown" was adapted from a book written by John Markoff and Tsutomu Shimomura who exploited Kevin, a man about whom neither of the authors had any direct knowledge, and pretended to be Mitnick experts when in fact they couldn't have been more clueless.

Markoff, a hack journalist who did everything that he could to portray Kevin a danger to society in order to keep writing articles about him, has claimed wild rumors about Mitnick to be fact (rumors such as Kevin hacking into NORAD computers, harassing Christie McNickle, and converting home phones into pay phones) with no regard for the fact that he was demonizing Kevin in the eyes of society and in the eyes of a justice system - a system that would eventually lock Kevin in solitary confinement for 8 months because they were afraid he would use prison phones to launch nuclear missiles if placed in general population. Tsutomu Shimomura is nothing but a smart-ass hacker wanna-be whose main contribution to the book "Takedown" was a list of his skateboarding and eating habits.

If anyone out there really wants to learn the true Kevin Mitnick story, please view "Freedom Downtime" by Emmanuel Goldstein. [http://us.imdb.com/Title?0309614]