Movie Review: Blackhat
What We Liked
What We Didn't Like
Blackhat is a film about computer hacker, a “black hat” in IT parlance, causing mayhem and destruction. In light of the recent world events, what more timely a topic could Hollywood possibly tackle? The film is directed by Michael Mann, who is known for films like Thief (1981), Heat (1995), and Miami Vice (2006) to name only a few. Mann is all about a gritty approach and hitting action beats aggressively while at the same time embracing the visual beauty of a scene. The script for this film was written by a first-timer, Morgan Davis Foehl, who is making the leap from editor to writer here, which is a bit ironic (more on that later).
The story follows Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) who is in prison for hacking and has now been provisionally released in order to pursue a menacing hacker – the aforementioned blackhat. The plan is not a new one. The send a thief to catch a thief plotline has been updated here as send a cyber-thief to catch a cyber-thief. Nick is assigned to a joint taskforce that includes the FBI and the Chinese Intelligence Service to catch the rogue blackhat. The rest of the team includes Carol Barrett (Viola Davis) of the FBI, Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang) from Chinese Intelligence – a coding expert, Lien Chen (Wei Tang) a Chinese hardware expert as well as Chen Dawai’s sister, and Mark Jessup (Holt McCallany) from the Department of Justice – who has been assigned to watch Hathaway with the aid of an ankle bracelet.
The group starts in one city and flies to the next in pursuit of the blackhat and eventually evolves into a sort of team. They all have their own agendas however, due to politics and other matters, such as Nick’s not wanting to go back to prison. The blackhat has engineered an accident at a Chinese nuclear power plant and then a run-up at the stock exchange. Neither event appears to be related and are only connected by virtue of the code written by the blackhat to pull off his crimes – malware found after the fact. The trick for the team is to retrace the code to the source while not tipping him off that they are onto him.
That is why they have brought Nick along. Tracking the code and deducing why and how the events are connected becomes his driving purpose – aside from romancing Lien Chen of course. The guy did just get out of prison after all. The film takes a different tone though when the team is attacked and the film shifts from crime thriller to revenge tale. I like this, in theory, but the execution of the shift leaves a little bit to be desired. After the attack, Nick is single-minded about pursuing the men who attacked his team – Kassar (Ritchie Coster) and his thugs – and tracking them back to their boss – the blackhat himself.
Chris Hemsworth in “Blackhat.” © 2014 – Universal Pictures.
Nick eventually corners the blackhat, Sadak (Yorick van Wageningen), with some cyber-theft of his own and this leads to the film’s showdown climax. But this is not the sort of final battle you would expect at all in a movie about cyber hacking.
Overall, the film is average at best; it could have been much better had the running time been reduced by thirty minutes. Despite its lengthy running time, it still does not sufficiently explore the psychology of the villainous blackhat. Both Sadak and Nick are hackers, but one crosses the line into terrorism and the other would apparently never consider that. Yet this is largely unexplored. Similarly, the irony of the charismatic Hemsworth being the smartest guy in the room is never addressed either. A bit of humor here could have gone a long way.
Despite its flaws, Blackhat is beautifully shot. Mann’s style is very evident in the sweeping landscapes and jarring action shots. His visual direction was excellent. Of particular note were the computer hacking shots that were done from an “inside the computer” point of view – a bit overused perhaps, but still very well done. Overall though, the writing and editing just wasn’t up to snuff. The acting was far better than I expected. The cast features some gems (Davis/McCallany/Mapother) that did very well. One standout, Leehom Wang, could be someone worth paying to see in the not too distant future. Other than the occasional accent slippage from Hemsworth, the rest of the actors were also quite good. Ultimately though, Blackhat is an average film that could have been quite good with some major editing.
Steven Gahm
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