For years filmmakers have struggled, and failed, to find a way to make computers look really, really cool in movies. Hackers rotated its cameras around the actors 360 degrees, Swordfish shot binary code at Hugh Jackman’s face like the strobe light at an EDM concert and The Matrix just made shit up all over the place and threw kung fu in there because, hell, why not?
Now the legendary Michael Mann – who brought us inside the human mind in Manhunter, deep into the world of thievery at least three times and, for some reason, also once into a haunted Nazi castle – has decided to invite us into the world of cyber warfare. So he plummets the camera into the CGI landscapes within a computer system, looks upwards through an inexplicably translucent keyboard and even tells us that computer hackers look like Chris Hemsworth. And still he doesn’t quite pull it off.
Because Blackhat, the new crime thriller from the director of Heat and Collateral, is just another crime story. The plot may be hidden underneath endless elaborate (but probably impeccably researched) technospeak but at its heart this story is about a criminal who cuts a deal to track down another criminal, falls in love with a hot chick and finally takes the law into his own hands when – get this – shit gets personal.
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Which more or less is the same thing The Matrix did, applying tried-and-true action movie tropes to a story based on nerdy concepts just so that everyone will be entertained and maybe, just maybe, find out what the acronym RAT stands for, if only by accident. (It stands for Remote Access Tool. See? It worked!) Blackhat doesn’t quite succeed at immersing us into the high tech world of modern cybercrime but at least it’s a stylish cat and mouse thriller.
Stylish. Not great. Blackhat kicks off when a mysterious hacker uses his RAT to melt down a Chinese nuclear reactor and then, for some reason, jack up the stock market price of soy. He makes no demands, and he apparently has no political statement. The only clue is the RAT itself, which was originally designed by prison inmate Nicholas Hathaway (Hemsworth). So in a joint operation, Chinese agent Chen (Leehom Wang) and Federal Agent Barrett (Viola Davis) decide to take a page from 48 Hours, freeing Hathaway to help them find the hacker and possibly earn his freedom.
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Good set up. A little formulaic perhaps, but the slick cinematography and stoic manliness of Michael Mann’s hard-earned signature style is enough to keep Blackhat going for about an hour before the sneaking suspicion that none of this is particularly interesting sets in. The villain kicks off the story of Blackhat with exciting intrigue, and then they disappear for most of the film just so that Hathaway can bed Chen’s sister (Wei Tang) and track down leads that we assume must be going somewhere, but for all we know are just an excuse for Hemsworth to look out windows, type on keyboards and be as enigmatic as he is capable.
The action finally detonates by the third act, with kickass violence and yet another excellent example of Michael Mann’s superb proficiency at filming shootouts, but by that point the damage has basically been done. Mann, cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh and a whole foursome of editors keep the drama just hypnotic enough to make it seem like something terribly important is always happening, but the absence of a genuine threat for what feels like half the movie saps too much energy from Blackhat, so that even a relatively satisfying conclusion can’t entirely right this ship.
I’ll give Blackhat one thing: Chris Hemsworth does eventually wear a black hat. It is also a finely produced thriller, mature and classy. It just doesn’t pound your pulse nearly enough to achieve its ambitious goal of turning computerized larceny into the stuff great films are made of.
This would be normally the point where I conclude with a tiresome and incredibly forced computer pun, but what do you want from me? A cookie or something?
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
