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Movie Review: “Blackhat” Shows The Horrors Of Cyber Terrorism

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A furloughed convict and his American and Chinese partners hunt a high-level cybercrime network from Chicago to Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Jakarta.

Michael Mann is a director who commands gritty realism in his movies. Just watch “Collateral,” “Miami Vice” (the movie, not the show, even though he created both) and the Robert De Niro/Al Pacino starrer, “Heat” for proof of that. “Heat” had one of the most realistic shootouts in the history of film up to that time and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any other movie since that has employed the same sense of authenticity. With “Blackhat,” Mann ups the ante, so to speak, moving on from shootouts on the streets of Los Angeles to the world of cyber-terrorism. The opening of the movie shows us, with just one click of a button, how hackers can wreak havoc anywhere in the world. It just so happens, this is a nuclear power plant and the repercussions are just short of catastrophic.

After the fallout from the power plant explosion, the Chinese authorities are able to recover a partial code from one of the computers that was hacked. The Chinese accept an invitation from the Americans to help them with the case and they request Detective Chen (Leehom Wang), who works for the Chinese Government, to come to America to assist. After reading the code, he informs his American counterpart, Det. Carol Barrett (Viola Davis), that part of the code was written by him and a friend, Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) when they were in college as a prank but that somebody must have retrieved the code and improved upon it to cause the destruction and mayhem in China. He informs Barrett that he will need the assistance of Nick but there’s one catch.

Nick is serving fifteen years in prison for computer hacking. Initially, Barrett refuses but when Chen reminds her that he and Hathaway are the two that wrote the original code and that between them they at least have a chance of stopping the bad guys, she reluctantly has him released, on the condition that he help catch the criminals responsible and stop any further attacks. Their mission takes them to China where along the way, most of the group are killed off in an ambush and only Hathaway and Chen’s sister Lien (Wei Tang) survive. As they become closer together, they must pull all their resources in order to stay one step ahead of the bad guys before they choose their next target. It’s great to see Chris Hemsworth outside of the Marvel universe and his “Thor” incarnation.

Don’t get me wrong, I love those movies and I think he’s terrific in them but it is just so easy for actors to get typecast in those kinds of roles that I like to see them reach outside of their comfort zone and here Mr. Hemsworth gives a very convincing performance. At times, it feels like a James Bond movie as we race around the world from Los Angeles to China to Jakarta but we never really have the chance to invest ourselves in the characters as the technical wizardry and cyber-speak take over at every opportunity. In one scene, the movie effectively shows us what happens inside a computer after the hackers have started their assault and it is very scary.

On the outside, it is a regular CPU but inside, it almost feels like an alien world as each key stroke sets the hackers plan into motion, lighting up different parts of the circuit boards until they attain their goal. There is another shootout on the streets of Hong Kong and while it is well choreographed, it comes nowhere near the sheer terror and hysteria Mr. Mann achieved in “Heat.” In the end, as you look back on the movie, you realize that you liked it but you didn’t love it. Try as he may, Mr. Mann, with every movie he makes, seems to be more interested in the technical aspect of filmmaking and not the story and the characterization and that’s a shame because without a good story and good performances, all you are left with is a film that, while visually stunning, is otherwise hollow and lifeless.

In theaters January 16th

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James McDonald

Originally from Dublin, Ireland, James is a Movie Critic with 40 years of experience in the film industry as an Award-Winning Filmmaker. He is also a member of the Critics Choice Association and the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association.