'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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This movie has budget of $70 million, according to Wikipedia. I'm absolutely convinced that Michael Mann and Morgan Davis Foehl used nearly all of the budget to buy drugs and get as high as humanly possible.

Because nothing else could explain the idiocy they wrote and filmed and tried to sell as a hacking-focused movie.

The story is absolutely ridiculous. Chris Hemsworth couldn't sell a master hacker no matter how much he tried. And he doesn't seem to be trying much... At least, they could buy a comb or hair wax to fix his constantly dangling strand of hair. Might as well cast The Rock to this role, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, it would perhaps be still more believable.

The movie is Michael-Mannishly dark at times and action is sometimes pretty gruesome, but feels too theatrical and unhinged. Like kids pointing sticks at each other and making machinegun sounds with their mouths. At least the cinematography is pretty good here and there, beautiful city shots and occasional explosion of style. Drugs do make you see world in pretty colors...

But the "hacking", well, at one point they trick NSA chief analyst (or some superior at least, it's unclear) to change their password while opening e-mail attachment with a keylogger payload. I think I threw up in my mouth at this scene. I'm sure the writer read that it's possible in a women's fashion magazine or something and thought it'll be realistic component in a hacker movie. It tells you exactly how much realism to expect. It's like a flight attendant opening a plane door to air the cabin mid-flight... It's that painfully dumb. That one thing that could never, ever happen. Rest of the hacking portion of this movie is easily as bad and you don't need to know anything about computer security to see how dumb it is (but if you do, it's even worse).

Well, if you dismiss "hacking" in movie called "Blackhat"(!!) and lackluster action scenes, well, there's basically nothing else left. Even the major conspiracy makes zero sense, hacker with ability to directly crash stock markets is still on about industrial water pumps for some reason and causes a nuclear catastrophe just to test it... what the hell?

Well, at least I hope the drugs were good.

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").