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Friday
Jun052015

What Keith's Watching: Blackhat (2014)

Blackhat proves one very simple rule: It's impossible to make a good movie about hacking. Sure, it's totally possible to use hacking as a plot point, but to make an entire 2+ hour movie about hacking is an impossible task, even for a great director like Michael Mann.

There are a couple problems with a hacking movie. The first is that hacking can only look cool for so long. You can only watch someone type lines of code without fully understanding what's going on. That's why in Swordfish, hugh Jackman hacks by solving puzzles. It looks cooler. Also, when you make a hacking movie, and part of the movie is about finding out who the hacker is, it means there is essentially no villain. We know what the vilian has done, but we don't have a face to go with the action. We don't even have a face in the shadows or a set of hands on a keyboard. So why do I care?

In Blackhat, we stumble upon a psuedo villain who's really just a thug. So when it comes down to it at the end of the movie, we're happy when the thug gets his due, but when we meet the blackhat hacker, I don't care. You can't wait until the end of the movie to reveal the villain. 

Also, the character that Chris Hemsworth plays is just a bizzare character. He's a hacker, but he's in great physical shape. It turns out he's a better detective than any of the other investigators he works with. And in Act 2 we find out that he can also shoot a gun. Sure. That makes sense. He also seems to have the ability throughout the movie to get inside the head of the blackhat hacker. Considering what little we've seen and heard from the hacker, it's quite astounding.

Now, the movie isn't poorly made. The shootouts are great. Every part of it is well made and well shot. But the story just falls apart and has no substance. The romance storyline has no real basis. The investigation just bumbles from one point to another. Thank God they were able to find a hacker everyman in Hemsworth that could do everything they needed whenever they were writtten into a corner.

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