By LINDSI HEBERT, Staff Reporter.
Directed by Michael Mann and released in 2015, “Blackhat” tells the story of an imprisoned hacker recruited to help the Chinese and American governments track down a villain who blows up a nuclear power plant in Hong Kong.
Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), an extremely talented hacker who used his talents for more than DDoSing servers, is in jail for 15 years because he was hacking his way to riches.
Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang), was once roommates with Nick in college and is now working for the Chinese government in their science and technology department, specializing in encrypted codes.
Chen Lien (Wei Tang), Dawai’s sister and also an accomplished hacker herself, apparently tags along for the ride.
These three work as the dream team to save the world from an evil hacker that’s attempting to eventually (through a slow, slightly convoluted process) ruin the world and win all the money and girls and blah blah blah. Will our heroes win? Will Nick have lots of sex with his old roomies sister? Will you want to sit through this entire movie?
“Blackhat” is one of those movies that could have been really cool. You have all of the things that make a great action movie: explosions, cool hacking sequences, backstabbing, twists and even rebelling from the man. This should have totaled to be awesome. Key phrase: Should have.
I got so bored watching this movie. I didn’t think it was possible to be bored in a movie where Chris Hemsworth is naked, but it is. Honestly, I debated walking out on “Blackhat.” I almost couldn’t do it. When you have gunfights happening on screen and you’re still bored, something is clearly wrong with your movie.
One of these things happens to be Chen Lien. Lien could have been a really cool female costar. She could have been an awesome mysterious woman who’s great at computers, and who is still feminine but strong and interesting. What’s not awesome is that it seems like she’s just there to be Nick’s love interest until probably the last half hour of the movie. She has no character development, and even after a severe change in her life, she’s pretty much “oh Nick I love you and I want to kill the bad guy.” There’s no real change in her actions. The only hint at a change in her personality is that sometimes she hugs Nick and cries. She’s one dimensional and it feels like she’s just there for eye candy.
There are so many more problems with “Blackhat,” most of which have to do with how boring the film is. Once you get to the ending, it actually picks up. It’s like the writers channeled their inner George R. R. Martin and let the bullets fly through some important characters. People just drop like flies, and some cool explosions happen and crap hits the fan.
Now they’re hunting down the main bad guy after they finally guess the right location. Skipping all of the overdrawn montage travel scenes where they just have artistic shots of highways and airports, things happen! Interesting things! I nearly wept with joy when they started.
Unfortunately, delving into these interesting parts are total spoilers for the rest of the movie. So, if you’re interested in seeing “Blackhat,” hang in there you brave soldiers. Like real life, it will get better.
On a scale of one to five gummy bears, with five being the highest, “Blackhat” gets a 1.5. The film was actually nicely edited, and the cinematography was good. Unfortunately, that’s all that’s good about it. Interesting concept, bad execution.
