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Blackhat (2015)

thereviewers
Jul 4, 2015
3 min read

Blackhat sees cyber-criminal Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) released into the custody of the United States Marshal Service to work alongside American and Chinese cybercrime analysts in an attempt to bring down a major criminal network of hackers.

Overall Review Score

0.5 out of 10

Review

Blackhat is a, 127-minute, 2015 film that starts with an up-tempo opening that sees hackers overheat and explode a nuclear plant in Hong Kong and other hackers from the FBI and Chinese military working together, with the aid of incarcerated cybercriminal, to identify the criminal network and prevent a future attack. However, the film quickly descends into a lifeless affair that alienates the audience and leaves them wondering how the film managed to go so far off course so quickly. As the up-tempo opening is replaced by hush whispers, deadpan acting, four locations that look and feel the same yet are meant to be set in four completely different parts of the world and characters randomly changing names. For example, John Ortiz’s character Henry Pollack randomly changes his name to Stanley Pollack while on the phone to Carol (Viola Davis) – presumably because someone hacked his mind and changed his name. Additionally, characters mysteriously develop expert levels of martial arts, have a romance, and or get involved in gunfights when it is convenient to the plot – which further highlights the poor nature of this film and its lackadaisical script. Overall, the cast and director, Michael Mann, have managed to create a film that is plagued with problems and one that strays so far from its cyber-drama premise that it might as well be called an action movie with a murky, muddled and confusing cyber sub-plot instead. Blackhat is certainly a film worth avoiding.

Reviewer 1's score & comments:

Score: 0 out of 10

Comments:

Blackhat had the potential to be a high tech cybercrime drama but, ultimately, falls way short of the mark. First of all the story seems to meander away at a snail’s pace and never really seems to pick up, not even in the films limited action scenes. Further to this the main characters seem rather one dimensional, only managing to pull of one of two facial expressions during the whole film which makes it very difficult to connect with them during the films quite frankly overtly long run time. In addition the never really delves into the ‘techno-savvy’ realm that had hoped for, skating around any mention of cyber criminality or computer hacking - the biggest mention of this is when one character talks about Remote Access Tools (RAT’s) but does not go any further to explain this to the audience.

Reviewer 2's score & comments:

Score: 1 out of 10

Comments:

Blackhat is a cyber-drama that has so many problems I was left wondering if the film studio suffered a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack or were hacked, as there is no way they would intentionally make a film this bad - however after a quick check this wasn't the case, they actually did make a rubbish film. So with that in mind, onto the problems: Blackhat has a 127-minute run time that feels a lot longer, due a combination of the cast lacking emotion and talking in low, hushed voices and the films complete lack of momentum. However, this is not the worst part of the film - Blackhat is meant to be a cyber-drama involving world-class hackers but the actors only spend, roughly, 10 minutes of the film actually touching computers and when they do actually type something they type silly and pointless commands which do nothing. For example, they use browser.exe to transfer money from one account to the next, yet browser.exe is not a recognised command, operable program, or batch file. Overall, Blackhat has so many plot holes, flaws and missed opportunities that even tech support would struggle to repair it. Blackhat is in need of a serious upgrade and reboot, its script is slow, its characters are lifeless, and its technical premise is replaced by an action mantra that does not gel with the look or feel of the film.