Hackers

I'm working in IT for over 10 years now, and let's be clear: Hackers is a movie, .. there's nothing real about the "hacking" going on in the movie.

There's a few scenes that are horribly done (for today's standards) but all in all I loved the movie. The acting is OK, the soundtrack is great and it changes for the everlasting "chliché" of the IT Nerd.

It's a movie that could surprise you, especially with the amount of bad movies being released nowadays. It's funny to see Johnny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie at the beginning of their careers as well.

If you're looking for light entertainment for one evening, ...

Ok, I've read lots of the reviews here. I'm a computer person by trade, and I'll agree that the effects, and even some of the terminology is WAY off. But that's not the point of this movie. It never claims to be a documentary, just a fun movie about good vs. bad, and good wining. It just happens to take place over the internet. I think that this movie has just gotten a bump rap, it's the perfect B movie for lazy Saturday nights...

This flick came out during my freshman year of high school, pretty much everyone who saw it that I knew had a blast watching it, and in fact saw it several times in the theater (one fellow saw it about 6 times i think). While the computer screens depicted aren't realistic so to speak (I'll get to that in a moment) it was exciting, and made computers exciting again, it also didn't hurt the fact that everyone I knew used Macs just like the Hackers in the movie, so as you can imagine, it inspired many of us to see if we had the potential to do similar things but ultimately gave up (popping in a few CD-ROM games was much more entertaining;;) ). Anyways, now I own the film on DVD and I believe I've come to a revelation regarding the computer screens shown in the film...what we see is not what is actually happening on the screen, what they're showing us is what the hackers are doing, as visualized in their mind, they picture the data on the screen in a way in their head where it comes together, and what we see is that picture in their head, if maybe only an enhanced picture...anyways, thought I'd share that.

Oh, and isn't it funny to see computer geeks drooling over a laptop with a 28.8 modem?::)

Obviously this movie is not an academy award winner. So it's going to score or not score points solely based on entertainment value.

Here's why I rate it a 7...

* The music - a great soundtrack, if you enjoy the era and genre ( Prodigy being one of the coolest bands featured) * The characters - They are all fun - especially Cereal Killer and the phone phreak guy * A pretty hot Angelina Jolie * The dialog - Some of it is pretty amusing, if you don't take the movie seriously * The overall presentation - I enjoy the signs of the time; grunge music posters, early virtual reality, etc; I enjoy the attempts at portraying what goes on inside of a computer even though it's totally wrong * I enjoy the attempt of the movie to be technical. Especially amusing is the discussion of Kate's laptop..."It has a killer refresh rate", lol; You kind of have to laugh at such things; They get some things right though. Like calling the compiler design book the Dragon book...it was named that when I was in college

Obviously weak is the portrayal of computers and hacking. As a computer professional, I can still live with it. Movies rarely get any of this stuff right, so you just put up with these things.

The plot is quite weak. But what do you expect? It suffices as a vehicle for the situations, dialog and music.

First off I would just like to say that anyone who reads into this movie too much(ie try to take the validity of each and every aspect of the movie) will hate the film. Coming from a programmer and a computer enthusiast, the movie was great despite all the false statements, fake guis and totally bs methods of cracking. Quite frankly if you are one of my fellow computer geeks don't expect anything close to the real deal, it would never make a good movie for the public. I think that the true movie here is behind the whole "hacking" front. It is the development of characters the build up of a plot and an exciting climax and satisfying denouement. In closing, don't expect a command line prompt or a true UNIX client on any of the systems because it just doesn't happen in movies. Instead watch the movie because its exciting, fun and a great throwback to the early 90's.