Blackhat

'BLACKHAT': Three and a Half Stars (Out of Five)

A cyber-thriller directed by Michael Mann and starring Chris Hemsworth; as an expert hacker who's released from prison early, in order to help the US and Chinese governments stop a malicious hacker terrorist group. The film was also co-produced and co-written by Mann, along with Morgan Davis Foehl. It costars Tang Wei, Leehom Wang, Viola Davis, Holt McCallany, Ritchie Coaster, Yorick van Wageningen and John Ortiz. The movie received mostly negative reviews from critics (with a few notable exceptions) and it was a bomb at the box office, but I really enjoyed it!

After a dangerous hacker group attacks a nuclear plant in Hong Kong, and hacks into the Mercantile Trade Exchange in Chicago, the FBI decides to team up with the Chinese government, in order to stop them. Captain Chen Dawai (Wei) is put in charge of finding the culprits, in China. He suggests to the FBI, that they spring his old friend, Nick Hathaway (Hemsworth), from a 15-year prison sentence; in order to help them. It turns out that Hathaway is an expert computer hacker, and he and Dawai actually wrote the computer code, used in the terrorist attacks, many years earlier. It's a deadly race against time to stop the terrorist group, as Hathaway also bonds with Dawai's sister, Chen Lien (Wang); a networking engineer also assisting Dawai and Hathaway in their mission.

The movie is classic Michael Mann; it reminds me of the gritty action thrillers that Mann, and other stylized directors like him, used to make in the 80s and 90s. It's slick, brutally violent and dumb; just like a lot of great 80s and 90s thrillers (from yesteryear). It's hard to follow, and I don't think the film probably makes a lot of sense anyway, but that doesn't matter; because it's still a lot of fun. Mann is still at the top of his game, in stylish directing, and Hemsworth makes a very engaging, leading man action hero. It's definitely an action film that's worth the time to watch; if you like Michael Mann, you shouldn't be disappointed.

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After a Chinese Nuclear plant is hacked, FBI agent Carol Barrett (Viola Davis) insists the FBI work with the Chinese government to track the hacker down. She is finally convinced that this needs the help of super hacker Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) who is serving a 15-year prison sentence.

I think most movies have an obligation to get the audience engaged, especially in the beginning. The beginning of this movie tried to dazzle us with computer hacking showing us what happens inside a computer with the CGI going wild, but it went on for too long and we started thinking of other things we needed to do like reorganizing our sock drawer. This was the first step in losing the audience.

The rest of movie slowly comes around trying to locate the hacker with huge amounts of Geek Teckno-babble losing us once again. Then with Nick's help we come to realize that this hack was not political, but something else. Yes, this is the "Twist" we come to believe is in every movie. And it is here the movie begins to make sense as more hacks come about disrupting economies throughout the world. Ah, so it's all about the money. Ah, we thought so. Once that is realized, the movie settles down to something we can finally understand: good guys vs the bad guys.

However, it is still slow-going as players stand around waiting for their lines. Add to this too many sub-titles that were too long to read before the scene changed and we lost the last 6-words or so. What were they thinking? Don't they know I never took that speed-reading course? Hey, I meant to.

A U.S. Marshall was supposed to stick with Nick everywhere he went, but we see him go to a restaurant to meet one of the hackers and no Marshall is in sight. Did the Continuity Girl (yeah, it's usually a girl) not read the script and mess up? Of course, there is a big fight here and, of course, Nick prevails, of course. Actually, this was a very good (read brutal) fight scene. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Probably the best part of the movie. Hey, who needs THOR?

This is tedious, but watchable because we keep hoping this will get better and it does in the last 15-minutes. The love interest between Nick and Chen (Tang Wei) is forced, but so were a lot of things in here. So what else is new? Most scenes were so short no player had any time to show off any acting talent. Long shots of player grimaces don't count. Now, about that sock drawer…………. (4/10)

Violence: Yes. Sex: No, we only see a make-out session. Nudity: No. Language: yes, some not much.

This film currently has an undeservedly low rating here on IMDb so it was with a bit of apprehension that I sat down to watch it and it proved to be much better than I had expected. The reason for the low rating I think is that the audiences today got too used to dumb 'action packed' crap like Taken that consists of little more than clichés and boring camera work. This movie dares to be different, it dares to be slow paced, watching it is like reading a book, it actually requires a mental effort on the part of the viewer to keep track of what's going on and naturally people these days don't like that. This film is from a different epoch, it's just too big and too multi-layered for the short attention span of the modern viewer weaned on vine videos. If you want to get an idea of what this movie is like without spoilers - think Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Don't be discouraged by the low rating, it's just that slow-burn thrillers are not everyone's cup of tea these days.

It should also be noted that it's not just in its approach to story telling that this film dares to be different it's also in its cinematography. Once again, it feels like a film from a different time period that hearkens back to the classic noir movies of yesteryear, something like Three Days of the Condor.

And last but not least, it's quite refreshing to have a main character that thinks ahead rather than simply barging in and relying solely on the script writers to help him prevail in whatever situation they may find themselves in.

If I had to pay to see this movie when I saw it, I'd be so mad, but I didn't, so I was disappointed for free. Chris Hemsworth and Voila Davis are so much MORE than the crappy roles they were given for this film. The storyline was all over the place; there are too many side stories to keep up with. The overall concept of the film is fun and interesting, but its execution is very poor. There's light at the end of the tunnel during a few scenes, and the attention of the audience is kept somehow by a very thin thread. In the end, it's pure curiosity that'll keep you from walking out on the movie altogether. In the hands of a different writer and director, this film would've been great. I suggest waiting for it to be available on Redbox instead of seeing it in the theater.

This is one of the few, say past fifteen years, films with science and or high tech as an important plot element, whether sci-fi or just drama, that did its research and got the science/tech mostly right. And, it did so in a way that explained it with some entertaining clarity e.g. the opening, and a couple of other scenes, showing packets of data traveling through computer architecture was about as good as it can be. The rest of the film that dealt with cyber hacking was presented with accuracy and surprising clarity for a mass marketing film. Great location authenticity with filming in L.A. (OK, that's not so great), Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong.

On the other hand the action scenes were basically just movie entertainment and at times a bit overboard. Such as, and a bit far-fetched, that our lead character (Hemsworth) is a world class coder (programmer) and some how had the time to become a world class action killing machine. Talk about being a Renaissance man! More of an international cast would have been interesting. Davis (with Tina Turner wig which made no sense for an agent) was stereotyped into filling the black FBI agent role which seems to be a popular character placement in film in recent years (e.g., recently, "Powers").