Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Wei Tang, Leehom Wang, Viola Davis, Ritchie Coster, and Holt McCallany
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Runtime: 133 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2015
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This is an American cyber-thriller about computer hacking. The actual title of the movie is a hacker term for someone who violates computer or internet security for personal gain, or “with malicious intent”.
The film starts by showing the effects of criminal hacking in Hong Kong, and Chicago. The initial attacks are focused on a Chinese facility in Chai Wan, Hong Kong, and a Mercantile Trade Exchange in Chicago. The opening sequence in the film is stunning as the camera goes beneath a key board to show a computer worm infiltrating a computer network in Hong Kong that controls a nuclear reactor.
China’s cyber warfare unit and the U.S. Government combine to try and track down the source of the attacks, and MIT-trained, Captain Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang) is recruited to find those responsible. Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) is serving a prison sentence in the USA for computer crime, when Chen Dawai recognises a code in a Romote Access Tool the hacker used which he wrote with Hathaway when they were roommates in college, years before. Dawai wants Hathaway to help. Hathaway agrees to assist, but wants his sentence commuted. The FBI agrees, but Hathaway knows that he will be sent back to prison immediately if his mission fails.
A team of American and Chinese operatives is assembled that includes FBI agents, Mark Jessup (Holt McCallany) and Carol Barrett (Viola Davis), and Dawai’s sister, Chen Lien (Wei Tang), who Dawai trusts. The group goes in search of the responsible hacker, and pursuit of him provides a chase through US, China, Japan, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
Lien and Hathaway become romantically involved. Hathaway hacks his way into NSA’s (National Security Agency) computer systems and learns that the responsible computer server is based in Jakarta. With such a security breach, Hathaway becomes too hot to handle, and the FBI moves to take him back. Hathaway manages to avoid the FBI and uses his hacking skills to confront Blackhat, the criminal mind behind it all. Blackhat is a paramilitary psychopath (Ritchie Coster), who plans massive instability of countries around the world for financial gain, and will stop at nothing to kill those who oppose him.
For Michael Mann this is an unusual movie. It aims to excite viewers with a lot of action-adventure that is high-tech, and it is full of choreographed set pieces that mix computer sophistication with action adventure. The movie teaches you a lot about how hackers get past electronic firewalls, and its script is full of the technical language and know-how of computer-driven, cyber security tools and codes. However, a lot of blood gets spilled along the way in the film’s adventure action. Dawai, Jessup and Barrett, for instance, meet violent deaths at the hands of Blackhat.
There is definite specialist appeal in the execution of clever hackings in this movie, and the film is caught between being a thoughtful IT piece and a fast-paced thriller yarn. The movie doesn’t make a very strong case on how to stop hacking threats. The adventure components of the film get in the way.
Michael Mann is a classy director who has been responsible for excellent films like “Miami Vice” (2006), “The Insider” (1999), and “Heat” (1995), and this movie has many Mann touches. Characteristically, he uses pregnant pauses in shaky camera work to force the viewer to reflect, he delivers violence suddenly in order to surprise, and he patterns scenes frequently to set the stage for action that is instantly required. The film makes very heavy use of dark silhouettes and confronting close-ups.
All told, this is a very watchable movie, but it disappoints. Hacking attacks are a global worry, and this movie reinforces genuine concern about them, but it doesn’t communicate or engender easily understood ideas about what to do when they occur, or how to prevent them. Anxiety remains about how to protect computers and what they control, and it is the adventure components that win out. The last moments of the film show what Hathaway can achieve as a successful hacker, with a little help from Blackhat’s ill-gotten gains.
There is a specialist feel about this film. The complexity of its adventure plotting aside, it is nevertheless an anxiety-arousing tale that explores in sophisticated fashion the possibility that global terror caused by clever computer-hacking is a reality for the future. But in the grim reality of the thriller-chase, it is all about who can hack the best.
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