Blackhat (2015) User Reviews

Tedious but Watchable

[bob-rutzel-239-525430 · 4/10 · 9 May 2015]

After a Chinese Nuclear plant is hacked, FBI agent Carol Barrett (Viola Davis) insists the FBI work with the Chinese government to track the hacker down. She is finally convinced that this needs the help of super hacker Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) who is serving a 15-year prison sentence.

I think most movies have an obligation to get the audience engaged, especially in the beginning. The beginning of this movie tried to dazzle us with computer hacking showing us what happens inside a computer with the CGI going wild, but it went on for too long and we started thinking of other things we needed to do like reorganizing our sock drawer. This was the first step in losing the audience.

The rest of movie slowly comes around trying to locate the hacker with huge amounts of Geek Teckno-babble losing us once again. Then with Nick's help we come to realize that this hack was not political, but something else. Yes, this is the "Twist" we come to believe is in every movie. And it is here the movie begins to make sense as more hacks come about disrupting economies throughout the world. Ah, so it's all about the money. Ah, we thought so. Once that is realized, the movie settles down to something we can finally understand: good guys vs the bad guys.

However, it is still slow-going as players stand around waiting for their lines. Add to this too many sub-titles that were too long to read before the scene changed and we lost the last 6-words or so. What were they thinking? Don't they know I never took that speed-reading course? Hey, I meant to.

A U.S. Marshall was supposed to stick with Nick everywhere he went, but we see him go to a restaurant to meet one of the hackers and no Marshall is in sight. Did the Continuity Girl (yeah, it's usually a girl) not read the script and mess up? Of course, there is a big fight here and, of course, Nick prevails, of course. Actually, this was a very good (read brutal) fight scene. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Probably the best part of the movie. Hey, who needs THOR?

This is tedious, but watchable because we keep hoping this will get better and it does in the last 15-minutes. The love interest between Nick and Chen (Tang Wei) is forced, but so were a lot of things in here. So what else is new? Most scenes were so short no player had any time to show off any acting talent. Long shots of player grimaces don't count. Now, about that sock drawer…………. (4/10)

Violence: Yes. Sex: No, we only see a make-out session. Nudity: No. Language: yes, some not much.

Blackhat is not only disappointing, its embarrassing

[trublu215 · 5/10 · 16 January 2015]

Blackhat is the latest from maverick director Michael Mann...it also happens to be his worst film ever. Yes, I am even factoring in The Keep. It is THAT bad. Starring Chris Hemsworth and Viola Davis, this film is a misfire and criminally misuses a talented cast and a talented crew. Nick is a furloughed convict trying to nail a destructive hacker who is damaging the financial stabilities of countries all around the world. Now, on the list of people better suited for this role, Chris Hemsworth shouldn't even be on this list. Watching him as a hacker is as painful as watching Adam Sandler in drag seduce Al Pacino. Working off a screenplay from Morgan Davis Foehl, Mann seems to focus more on having the shakiest hand-held cinematography not in a Paranormal Activity film than actually telling a coherent story with good characters. And for those of you who were expecting Michael Mann to deliver a film like Heat or The Insider, you will walk away from this thoroughly disappointed. The action is short, rare and very tame while the scenes that are attempting to explain what the hell is going on are so convoluted, long and boring that it creates a very uneven film that borders unwatchable. One of the biggest gripes I have with this film is the cinematography. It is entirely too shaky for a film like this and, on a serious note, reminded me more of End of Watch. While that style fit End of Watch perfectly, it doesn't fit this film. It doesn't make it look gritty, it just makes it look painfully under-produced and underfunded. Overall, Mann's Blackhat serves as one of the biggest disappointments in recent memory considering the fact this is Michael Mann we're talking about here...the guy who did Heat, Thief and Collateral. Unfortunately, if this is the best Mann has to offer, I fear it is only going to get worse as time goes on. Blackhat is underdeveloped, unrealistic, and filmed terribly. Watcher beware!!!

Watching it was not a good experience

[yuval-invoke · 4/10 · 27 February 2015]

Suffers from inconsistencies, both technical and story wise. They change the shooting styles, cameras, fps, warmth/cold - for no apparent reasons at all. Feels like it's not clear what this movie "wants to be". The main character is supposed to be a "super-hacker" but doesn't do anything "super hack-y", just wanders around, shooting people, and nails the female protagonist. Doesn't have many hacking-scenes for a "hackers movie", has tons of boring gun-scenes instead, from some reason. The motivation of the villain was, not interesting. References many other "movie-cliches" (not in a good way). Severely lacks humor. The few jokes in it are really cheesy (yeah, it's not a comedy , but comic reliefs are important). Many of the audience members left the theater in the middle or before the end.

Video review: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=842110769178326

Extremely disappointing

[kayserkilian · 1/10 · 29 January 2015]

1. REALLY FLAT CHARACTERS

Even tho the movie is rather long, it invests almost no time into character development.

1.1 Chris Hemsworth is left with a role that is neither likable, nor interesting, and I have never heard one line of good dialogue from him throughout the whole thing (same for every character here). He's supposed to be a genius hacker, but if we wouldn't be told that all the time, nobody would recognize him as either a genius or a hacker. He's just an attractive dude who knows a thing or 2 about codes. SPOILER: Also, in the end, he solves all his problems just by primitive physical force. Wow. what a hacker.

1.2 The Chick and the love affair... it doesn't get more flat than that. It really doesn't. She is also supposed to be a great IT specialist or something like that. But we barely see any of those skills either.

1.3 The Bad Guy, well... I hoped for the entire movie that he would make the difference when he appears. But he didn't. He was just a one dimensional greedy cliché.

1.4 The supporting characters are no better. Like that black government lady. Saying "I lost someone on 9/11" shortly before she dies is an absolutely desperate attempt to give her character (that was emotionally completely meaningless before) some depth and make her death more tragic. Another Michael Mann movie, where this technique worked really well was "Heat". In "Blackhat it just didn't work one bit.

2.SOOOO MUCH BUILDUP FOR THE MOST UNSPECTACULAR "TWIST" EVER.

In the first half, the movie raises a few questions and sets up some mysteries. I actually liked that, but only because I wanted to see the puzzles solved creatively and unexpectedly. SPOILER AGAIN!... turns out the bad guy hacked a nuclear power plant (!) and the stock market (!!!) TO PRACTICE (?????) for some rusty engines somewhere in Malaysia. I'm not gonna lie, I bursted out laughing in the theatre at that point, and a few other people were even joining me.

3. I'M NOT AN IT-SPECIALIST, BUT I HEARD THE HACKING SHOWN IN THE MOVIE IS RATHER LEGIT.

...ok but who cares? That would have been the icing on the cake if the movie itself was good, yes. But that fact alone doesn't make it a good movie or anything.

So that's it. I'm really confused about the many positive feedbacks here. I can not imagine how anyone could give this movie more than 3 stars. I can't even give it 2...

Absolute waste of time and a talented director and cast...

More paradox than movie

[A_Different_Drummer · 7/10 · 17 November 2016]

Seriously. Here you have a Michael Mann A-list movie about a very topical issue and starring two individuals (Helmsworth and Tang) with genetics so flawless they could, in theory, repopulate the globe with beautiful babies if they had to ... and the reviews are mainly dismal, and the IMDb rating about what you would expect from an indie produced in someone's basement....? What happened? They say that when a spouse is killed the first suspect the police consider is the remaining spouse.

And when a film of such potential as this one seems to land flat on its face ... the first suspect is always the script.

And there is the problem. Indeed.

The script is not merely unconventional, it would have trouble passing an inkblot test. Off the top ten minutes (great setup!) the audience is conditioned to expect one kind of movie, then a half hour later they realize they are getting yet another kind of movie, then 2/3 of the way through when most of the A-list cast gets killed in a gunfight (I did check the spoiler box!) they suddenly realize they are getting yet another kind of movie .... and in the last five minutes when the two lovers head off for parts unknown while the CIA and NSA appear to be watching .. the audience finally realizes it has no idea what it is actually getting at all.

And that, kind reader, explains the rating issue. It is not nice to mess with Mother Nature and equally not nice to present an audience with an action film they cannot understand.

Now personally (which is the whole point of being an IMDb reviewer) I liked it. But mainly for the way the story arcs scoffed at convention and constantly veered off in some strange direction or another.

But then again I like to study films as well as watch them, and most viewers may not have such flexibility.

That is the kind of mistake amateurs make. One expects more from Mann.

Slow, boring, uninteresting and a waste of time

[grandmastersik · 1/10 · 1 May 2015]

I think that about sums this film up.

Some hacker who most will recognise as the god of thunder is released from prison by his bestie, to help track down some faceless cyber-criminal. An hour and a half in, we're still none the wiser as to what's going on, but do know that the released hacker is free to run around the globe as he pretty much spearheads the investigation... which, sadly, is even less entertaining than watching YouTube videos on how to write HTML.

His best mate from university also just so happens to have a semi-hot sister with dodgy English tagging along, and while it's understandable that, having been banged up for some time, our hacker is very likely to jump on the first thing in a skirt, her interest in him seems like a bizarre Chinese experiment on how to have a relationship in which there is zero chemistry.

There's some US Marshall assigned to keep the hacker in line, but that doesn't include stopping him from going around cutting open people's faces with broken bottles in restaurants, or interfering with crime scenes when their main suspect has been removed from the equation under suspicious circumstances.

Our hacker is also 10x smarter than the entire Hong Kong police force, a krav magra expert, quite nifty with a firearm and the all-round hero, being the first to go into a reactor after some kind of meltdown. Given his skillset, he could have just hacked into MI6, gotten a fancy watch and car full of gadgets and lived out the rest of his days as 007.

Seriously, the film is god-awful and for a huge fan of action films like myself to want to press the stop button in the middle of the first real fire-fight, something has to be very wrong.

As it happens, I couldn't endure much longer after that and came here to write this instead, because telling others how I turned this tedious dross off seemed like a much better way to spend my time than sitting through the rest of the film to see what happens in the end... which is something I really couldn't care about.

Classic Michael Mann!

[Hellmant · 7/10 · 19 May 2015]

'BLACKHAT': Three and a Half Stars (Out of Five)

A cyber-thriller directed by Michael Mann and starring Chris Hemsworth; as an expert hacker who's released from prison early, in order to help the US and Chinese governments stop a malicious hacker terrorist group. The film was also co-produced and co-written by Mann, along with Morgan Davis Foehl. It costars Tang Wei, Leehom Wang, Viola Davis, Holt McCallany, Ritchie Coaster, Yorick van Wageningen and John Ortiz. The movie received mostly negative reviews from critics (with a few notable exceptions) and it was a bomb at the box office, but I really enjoyed it!

After a dangerous hacker group attacks a nuclear plant in Hong Kong, and hacks into the Mercantile Trade Exchange in Chicago, the FBI decides to team up with the Chinese government, in order to stop them. Captain Chen Dawai (Wei) is put in charge of finding the culprits, in China. He suggests to the FBI, that they spring his old friend, Nick Hathaway (Hemsworth), from a 15-year prison sentence; in order to help them. It turns out that Hathaway is an expert computer hacker, and he and Dawai actually wrote the computer code, used in the terrorist attacks, many years earlier. It's a deadly race against time to stop the terrorist group, as Hathaway also bonds with Dawai's sister, Chen Lien (Wang); a networking engineer also assisting Dawai and Hathaway in their mission.

The movie is classic Michael Mann; it reminds me of the gritty action thrillers that Mann, and other stylized directors like him, used to make in the 80s and 90s. It's slick, brutally violent and dumb; just like a lot of great 80s and 90s thrillers (from yesteryear). It's hard to follow, and I don't think the film probably makes a lot of sense anyway, but that doesn't matter; because it's still a lot of fun. Mann is still at the top of his game, in stylish directing, and Hemsworth makes a very engaging, leading man action hero. It's definitely an action film that's worth the time to watch; if you like Michael Mann, you shouldn't be disappointed.

Watch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUT8JIkuU9Y

Broken Code

[Prismark10 · 4/10 · 15 March 2019]

Blackhat is a tedious and a poorly plotted thriller from the normally reliable Michael Mann.

The Chinese crime investigation agency join forces with the FBI when a a Chinese nuclear plant is hacked and then later the Chicago Mercantile Trade Exchange.

The Chinese send Chen Dawai and his sister Chen Lien to join the FBI led by Carol Barrett (Viola Davis) to find who is the hacker.

Dawai wants his old roommate from MIT who wrote an important piece of code. Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) who is now in prison.

Hathaway is released and joins the team. As they investigate the team is whittled down in shootouts. Hathaway realises that this cybercime is an elaborate plan to make money.

This is a globe trotting cyberthriller. It has some muscular neon lit shootouts but it also wastes its characters and actors such as Viola Davis and John Ortiz in a baffling shootout sequence.

When it goes to its finale set in Indoenesia, you have people finding each other in vast crowds and no one in the crowd seems to run when there are people shooting.

The movie is an implausible mess.

Hacking - Lucrative Trade

[westsideschl · 7/10 · 31 July 2015]

This is one of the few, say past fifteen years, films with science and or high tech as an important plot element, whether sci-fi or just drama, that did its research and got the science/tech mostly right. And, it did so in a way that explained it with some entertaining clarity e.g. the opening, and a couple of other scenes, showing packets of data traveling through computer architecture was about as good as it can be. The rest of the film that dealt with cyber hacking was presented with accuracy and surprising clarity for a mass marketing film. Great location authenticity with filming in L.A. (OK, that's not so great), Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong.

On the other hand the action scenes were basically just movie entertainment and at times a bit overboard. Such as, and a bit far-fetched, that our lead character (Hemsworth) is a world class coder (programmer) and some how had the time to become a world class action killing machine. Talk about being a Renaissance man! More of an international cast would have been interesting. Davis (with Tina Turner wig which made no sense for an agent) was stereotyped into filling the black FBI agent role which seems to be a popular character placement in film in recent years (e.g., recently, "Powers").

If you make a hacker-movie, at least get your basic facts right..

[scottyxl · 5/10 · 9 February 2015]

I must say when I watched the trailer for this movie I was skeptical, there are only a few hacker- movies that are enjoyable to watch.

Sometimes I am wrong and the movie turns out to be better then I expected but not in this case. I actually got quite annoyed watching this. The computer action looked authentic by using existing OS-es and interfaces but they still made huge mistakes. IP's with numbers higher than 255 is just plain stupid and accessing a top-secret NSA program with some simple social engineering looked convincing on screen but I doubt the NSA allows simple user/pass access to such tooling. I could go on and on...

I did like the idea of the plot, too bad the execution was so terrible. Probably the only thing I really liked where the two big shootout scenes, you saw a bit of Heat's director Mann there:)

Unsynced audio and weird changes in volume where also very annoying, something you don't expect from a $70mil movie.

I'm giving this a +1 because it tried to be authentic so a 4 bumps up to a 5/10 rating.

Not exactly perfect but surprisingly good

[igorfazlyev-01869 · 8/10 · 25 October 2015]

This film currently has an undeservedly low rating here on IMDb so it was with a bit of apprehension that I sat down to watch it and it proved to be much better than I had expected. The reason for the low rating I think is that the audiences today got too used to dumb 'action packed' crap like Taken that consists of little more than clichés and boring camera work. This movie dares to be different, it dares to be slow paced, watching it is like reading a book, it actually requires a mental effort on the part of the viewer to keep track of what's going on and naturally people these days don't like that. This film is from a different epoch, it's just too big and too multi-layered for the short attention span of the modern viewer weaned on vine videos. If you want to get an idea of what this movie is like without spoilers - think Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Don't be discouraged by the low rating, it's just that slow-burn thrillers are not everyone's cup of tea these days.

It should also be noted that it's not just in its approach to story telling that this film dares to be different it's also in its cinematography. Once again, it feels like a film from a different time period that hearkens back to the classic noir movies of yesteryear, something like Three Days of the Condor.

And last but not least, it's quite refreshing to have a main character that thinks ahead rather than simply barging in and relying solely on the script writers to help him prevail in whatever situation they may find themselves in.

Gives You Just Enough to Not Walk Out

[mturner7 · 6/10 · 15 January 2015]

If I had to pay to see this movie when I saw it, I'd be so mad, but I didn't, so I was disappointed for free. Chris Hemsworth and Voila Davis are so much MORE than the crappy roles they were given for this film. The storyline was all over the place; there are too many side stories to keep up with. The overall concept of the film is fun and interesting, but its execution is very poor. There's light at the end of the tunnel during a few scenes, and the attention of the audience is kept somehow by a very thin thread. In the end, it's pure curiosity that'll keep you from walking out on the movie altogether. In the hands of a different writer and director, this film would've been great. I suggest waiting for it to be available on Redbox instead of seeing it in the theater.

Don't make the same mistake I did.

[BrentHankins · 3/10 · 15 January 2015]

Sometimes, watching a bad film - and in my case, subsequently writing a review of a bad film - can be an enjoyable experience. There are some films that are so painfully bad that they actually become somewhat fascinating, and there's a part of you that wants tell others about them, mostly so you can sit around afterward saying things like "do you remember that part when..." and sharing a laugh.

And then there are films like Blackhat, which is so appallingly atrocious that it borders on being offensive. While it probably isn't fair to believe that every film from Michael Mann to be as engaging as Heat or as exciting as Collateral, audiences should still be able to expect a certain level of competence from the veteran director. In this case, those competencies aren't just missing - it's almost as if they never existed. If it weren't for a handful of signature shots, I would never have believed that Mann had anything to with this mess of a film.

Chris Hemsworth, best known for his role as Thor in the Marvel films, is laughably miscast as Nicholas Hathaway, an MIT graduate currently serving a 15-year sentence for hacking into a series of banks. After a disaster in a Chinese power plant is traced back to a malicious piece of code, Hathaway gets furloughed in order to help a no-nonsense FBI agent (Viola Davis) and his former roommate, now a Chinese government official (Wang Leehom), track down the culprit - because of course, Hathaway just happens to have a special connection to the code.

And speaking of special connections, there's also his old pal's sister (Tang Wei), who gets a few looks at Hathaway and his constantly unbuttoned shirt and falls right into bed with him. There's a throwaway line about her being some sort of network engineer, but she exists solely as a plot device, an effort to shoehorn a preposterous romance into a film that is already full of things that make absolutely no sense. For starters, if Hathaway has been in prison for most of his adult life, when did he find time to become an expert marksman with a handgun, or a master of hand-to- hand combat?

This is just one of many, many questions that Blackhat raises, without offering a single satisfactory answer. Michael Mann goes to great lengths to extend the film's already overbearing running time by subscribing to the "style over substance" theory. Take, for example, the film's opening sequence, which finds the camera doing a microscopic zoom into phone lines and over motherboards, showing us what it believes are the inner workings of technology as data is being transmitted. It's an arrogant, ham-fisted attempt to create excitement where none exists, and the truth is, we don't care about seeing the data travel from Point A to Point B - we just want to know what happens when it gets there.

Rarely have I found myself so overwhelmingly frustrated with a film, and I honestly can't remember the last time I sat in a theater checking my watch as often as I did during Blackhat. This is the first theatrical release I've seen since before the start of the new year, and I almost feel ashamed by the fact that I wasted the title of "first movie of 2015" on this garbage. Unlike the aforementioned so-bad-they're-good films, there is nothing redeemable, interesting, or enjoyable about Blackhat. Don't make the same mistake I did.

-- Brent Hankins, www.nerdrep.com

I couldn't sit through it all.

[mauvm · 1/10 · 29 January 2015]

I was so excited when I first heard about this movie! It just has a lot of potential, especially regarding the online events from the past years. But watching the first half of this movie felt like Hollywood was flipping me off. It keeps becoming harder for me to sit through the Hollywood movies due to the lack of depth and the logical mistakes that they keep making:

1) A nuclear reactor does not get hacked over the wire. Why would a country be stupid enough to give the main computers in a nuclear reactor access to the internet? So that the employees can play online poker? The real hack was done by writing highly specific software and spreading it on to as much USB sticks as possible. One of them was used by an employee and voìla.

2) Three main characters that have one-liner back stories? Also the dialog feels rushed and often very corny.

3) First it's all "a marshal will be by your side in every point in time" and not much later he seems to have all the freedom in the world (regarding computer access). The marshal even hands him his phone! And that to a guy that can open up a terminal, hack a bank, and wire 900 dollars to all of his inmates..

4) In the Chinese restaurant Nick tracks down the IP address of the guy they were supposed to meet, which had 265 in it. Basic networking 101: an IPv4 address has four digits, separated by dots, ranging from 0-255. For a movie about with a 70 million dollar budget, I'd expect they'd do some fact checking.

Apparently the real challenge is making believable movies about IT related things (they nailed it in the movie Her).. Guess I'm back to watching documentaries again.

Deliberately paced and tense with enough intrigue to keep you guessing. If you a fan of Michael Mann you will enjoy this.

[cosmo_tiger · 6/10 · 11 May 2015]

"This isn't about money. This isn't about politics. I can target anyone, anything, anywhere." After a terror attack hits a Chinese factory it is tracked to a malware attack. When it is found that parts of the code were written by Nick Hathaway (Hemsworth) he is brought in to help find the attacker. With his freedom on the line he must now work with the FBI in order to track down the cyber terrorist before they strike again, and execute a more horrific attack. Michael Mann is a very interesting director. Unlike most directors he assumes the audience can catch up to what is happening and doesn't treat us like we are incapable of figuring out the plot without exposition after exposition. He uses technical language throughout this movie, but as you watch you can figure out what is happening. I really appreciate that. As for the movie itself it is tense and exciting. Michael Mann has done movies like, The Insider, Heat, Collateral, and Miami Vice and this movie has the feel of those. Deliberately paced and tense with enough intrigue to keep you guessing. This is a good movie that I liked, but not something I think I would watch again. Overall, If you a fan of Michael Mann you will enjoy this. I give it a B.

This is one of the worst movies of all time.

[techno2035 · 2/10 · 19 January 2015]

Just to begin, I want anyone reading this to take my review with a grain of salt; I did not finish this movie. I walked out of the theater about three-fourths of the way through.

I know that Michael Mann has made other movies that have been deemed good (I personally haven't seen Heat and others), but his direction in this movie is just awful. The best way I can explain the direction in Blackhat is a combination of high-budget student film and found-footage junk. Many shots just don't make sense and others are close-ups on Chris Hemsworth's face, but in the worst way.

The acting is pretty awful. Everyone sounds like their just reciting lines and not really acting. The pacing even sounds like their waiting for their fellow actors to find where on the page they are so they can say the right lines. I feel like Chris Hemsworth is the only one who is really trying and his American accent is actually believable.

I don't often complain about sound design in a movie, but I have to make a special case for Blackhat. Scenes where shots were fired and explosives ignited were so loud that I actually had to cover my ears in the movie theater. Sometimes, in the middle of sentence in a block of dialog, the volume would change dramatically, and it sounded awful. Also, there is A LOT of really awful and painfully obvious dubbing in this movie, and almost what seems like stock sounds not matching up what I saw on screen.

This whole movie, or at least the parts I watched, were incredibly boring. After a while, I went to the bathroom and before I went back into the auditorium, I found myself reading the fine print of movie posters around the door. That was more interesting to me than the "hacker action movie." I also just want to say that I feel like this movie insulted my intelligence. I know that sounds pretentious, but seriously, you would have to know absolutely NOTHING about computers for this make sense to you. Having some coding experience, this movie just seems stupid to entice people who like flashing lights. Code is not drag-and-drop, code does not look like it does in the film, and your I.P. address is not the same thing as a URL.

The characters were incredibly dull and absolute zero chemistry together, which just made their interactions that much more "why?" Finally, I could write an entire novel on the weird inconsistencies in the plot and things in the movie that just make absolutely no sense.

The only reason, and I mean THE ONLY REASON, I am giving this movie two stars is that there is a fight sequence featuring Chris Hemsworth near the beginning that is actually pretty bad ass.

Watch It And Decide For Yourself

[fvghpxb · 7/10 · 16 March 2022]

The IMdB mean score is near 5 as some people gave it 1 and some 10. Lack of distribution suggests a combination of these reviews are not honest, audiences have become fixated on a few formula, lots of people want thriller escape not reality reflection. The 2015 movie in my tech professional estimation indicated what was possible at the time. Watch it for yourself. Decide for yourself.

Epitome of bad

[inc-133-70013 · 2/10 · 15 January 2022]

This movie has budget of $70 million, according to Wikipedia. I'm absolutely convinced that Michael Mann and Morgan Davis Foehl used nearly all of the budget to buy drugs and get as high as humanly possible.

Because nothing else could explain the idiocy they wrote and filmed and tried to sell as a hacking-focused movie.

The story is absolutely ridiculous. Chris Hemsworth couldn't sell a master hacker no matter how much he tried. And he doesn't seem to be trying much... At least, they could buy a comb or hair wax to fix his constantly dangling strand of hair. Might as well cast The Rock to this role, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, it would perhaps be still more believable.

The movie is Michael-Mannishly dark at times and action is sometimes pretty gruesome, but feels too theatrical and unhinged. Like kids pointing sticks at each other and making machinegun sounds with their mouths. At least the cinematography is pretty good here and there, beautiful city shots and occasional explosion of style. Drugs do make you see world in pretty colors...

But the "hacking", well, at one point they trick NSA chief analyst (or some superior at least, it's unclear) to change their password while opening e-mail attachment with a keylogger payload. I think I threw up in my mouth at this scene. I'm sure the writer read that it's possible in a women's fashion magazine or something and thought it'll be realistic component in a hacker movie. It tells you exactly how much realism to expect. It's like a flight attendant opening a plane door to air the cabin mid-flight... It's that painfully dumb. That one thing that could never, ever happen. Rest of the hacking portion of this movie is easily as bad and you don't need to know anything about computer security to see how dumb it is (but if you do, it's even worse).

Well, if you dismiss "hacking" in movie called "Blackhat"(!!) and lackluster action scenes, well, there's basically nothing else left. Even the major conspiracy makes zero sense, hacker with ability to directly crash stock markets is still on about industrial water pumps for some reason and causes a nuclear catastrophe just to test it... what the hell?

Well, at least I hope the drugs were good.

Better than a lot of the reviews

[ddush · 7/10 · 3 May 2020]

A different crime/action/thriller for sure. Watched it because of Chris Hemsworth to be honest but it was actually pretty good. All the other actors were good, Viola Davis of course but others whose names I did not know. Yes maybe 10-15 minutes could have been edited out somewhere to shorten it for the impatient viewers but perhaps they should be more patient. Several different things happened to keep you wondering why the bad guy did what he did at the beginning, so it took a while to figure that out. If you were a computer geek you would probably like it even more as you would understand all the lingo re:hacking, but still good for us regular people. Not just a action/shoot em up type had some thinking parts as well. Overall a solid 7

Hacked Off

[damiwi1 · 1/10 · 24 February 2015]

Spoiler Warning - this review doesn't go into details but may contain some spoilers.

I'm usually a fan of Mann's work but this was a major disappointment. It's a long time since I've actually considered walking out of a movie in the first fifteen minutes but I have to be honest, I was thinking can I really sit through to the end and if I do, will I deserve a medal.

I noticed at the very beginning that there was an issue with the sound and I couldn't decide if it was just our cinema but I'd be interested if others found the same problems. Sure there were scenes where they intended for the sound to be toyed with but it just never seemed right throughout the entire movie, mainly too quiet.

I think the choice of Hemsworth as lead was a poor one too. There were many pretty boy shots permeating throughout the film that just seemed to be included to show how good looking Hemsworth is and not because they had any particular relevance. There were also the topless scenes of him showing his muscles but really the film should have focused more on his brains really, considering he was supposed to be a Computer genius of sorts. You might as well have been watching adverts for male grooming products instead of the actual film in places.

There were some Gun battles but if you've seen Heat, they might as well have been cut and pasted in, nothing original but I hear people saying this is Mann, what do you expect. So won't dwell on those too much.

So to some it up, this is a film that will soon go into the recycle bin of my mind.

Not the worst I've seen but certainly one of the most disappointing, considering it was a Mann film.

surprised in a good way

[desperradoo · 8/10 · 14 April 2016]

I waited a long time watching this movie because of all the bad summaries and ratings, but, here is my opinion. - Blackhat is an entertaining movie with an interesting visual language and I was really surprised how "not that bad" it is. Yeah sure, it doesn't have the dept of a Heat or Aviator, but it is still a solid peace - I Have a feeling that a lot of the people didn't understand Manns intentions in terms of camera, picture language and dramaturgy. The same thing happened with Miami vice! - My advice, watch it and form your own opinion and do not make the same mistake as me not watching it due to the opinion of others.

Different take on film. Found it Enjoyable.

[dtdblakeney93 · 7/10 · 17 January 2015]

This is a different kind of movie. The plot is not very gripping at first, but I found it enticing entering into a world I know nothing about and am curious to explore. The actors in this film are great and I believe were not given a script to really show off their acting chops. That being said, I really like the response given by those in the information technology sector, that the film was very true to how hacking actually goes about. I have read many reviews that discard this saying that true hacking is too boring, and I think that is just silly. Camera angles and effects really make this film for me. Very cool to witness certain scenes and the direction they were given. Definitely a slow paced movie and once respecting that this pace was intentional, you start to really enjoy this movie. Glad I went to see it.

Terrible, terrible, terrible - I can only write that word so often

[gbukacheski-5-446003 · 1/10 · 15 January 2015]

I'm a pretty big Michael Mann fan despite his occasional misfire, but all I can say is "What was he thinking?!"

To get the good out of the way (not a promising way to start a review, huh?), the movie looked kinda nice. Well lit, interesting angles, great locations. The frenetic, hand-held camera work was a little distracting at times, but did add some excitement (when I wasn't getting motion-sick during the running sequences). Also, I heard lots of comments about how Chris Hemsworth is pretty dreamy, so I guess it's got that going on for it.

Now that that's over with - THE SCRIPT, OH MY DEAR LORD, THE SCRIPT! Who decided this was worthy of putting on screen. The screen-writer's previous credits include - NOTHING! I'm all for rooting for up-and- comers, but really? His previous Hollywood credits are Assistant Editor of a few TV shows and 2 (middling) Adam Sandler movies. There were lines that came out of nowhere, and led nowhere. Here's where my spoiler warning comes in. 2 law enforcement officers are chasing down another character and speaking about the case, when all of a sudden (with no lead-up or reason) one asks the other "Who did you lose in 9/11?" What?!! Where did that come from? There was no mention of losing family members, 9/11 or emotional turmoil at any place since these characters have been on screen. And the forced 'love story' of the leads (notice the quotes?). Yikes! Let's forget about the fact that a hacker and a computer server expert would (most likely) not look like fashion models and be able to fight (with guns or without)- it came out of nowhere and led nowhere. At no point did it feel organic. It felt more like someone posted stickies in the columns of the script with jokes about how these 2 characters would have a hilarious love story, and someone accidentally thought that it was supposed to be part of the script. AND, the way they figured out the bad guy's evil master plan. "Look at these map coordinates. What's there? Nothing? OK, let's go check it out anyway. Hmmm, there really is nothing here - I think I'll walk this way for no apparent reason. Oh look, here's his master plan." And the ending, oh the ending. Really? No one noticed that amount missing? Also didn't realize you could use an ATM with a secret Swiss bank account - see, I learned something. AND, he's on the FBI's top ten most wanted (granted, wrongly) for the stunt he just pulled, and they figured, "Oh, let's just let him go". Yes, yes, he's a talented hacker (and underwear model), I know, I know.

As far as the acting, it's hard for me to judge. I kind of don't blame the actors - it was the material they had to work with.

The sound mix was also a bit of a disaster. Much of Hemsworth's dialogue sounded dubbed - not ADR, dubbed. A bad dub at that. Sound quality didn't match lines he just spoke the second before. Instead of sounding like he was speaking in the location he was in, they sounded crisp, clear and loud.

The movie honestly felt like they were in a rush to get it out for the January death slot, so corners were cut.

Please, please don't pay to go see this movie (thankfully I saw it a free screening - and still felt ripped off). When it comes to your favorite streaming service, don't waste the percentage of the $8 monthly fee to watch it. When it comes on TV next year, don't lose those 2.5 hours of your precious life that you will never get back.

Terrible, just...terrible...

a meandering pseudo-techno-thriller that leaves you utterly disappointed

[intermediaryco · 2/10 · 18 January 2015]

What a Dud! What a slow developing, Boring, overly long Dud! As a person from the IT industry I went into the theater wanting to actually like this "film" (shot on Video), but it was just impossible. From the overly used computerized graphical depiction of electrons insidiously racing their way through motherboard and chip circuitry during the boring attack sequences, to the seriously dragging rest of the storyline that makes the viewers ask "Please God - Will it ever end?!" Also I personally discovered that watching a a group of pretty nerds frustratingly tap, TAp, TAPPING! through command line widows of programming code also proves to be approximately as unpleasant as that funky smell that hits you when first entering a truck-stop bathroom. If you paid me I don't think you'll get me to watch that movie again. It has the look and feel of late night cable crap to the film style, and a (Here is where I should responsibly say "spoiler alert" but that would imply you could do that beyond Michael Mann's own hugely crappy anti-climactic ending. Cliff's notes Version: Save your money and see something else, thank me later. Also, For the record; I dare anyone to watch that Turd of a Film and call me a liar. : D

This movie needs more love,

[twc9913 · 7/10 · 19 January 2015]

I'm genuinely baffled by the 5.5 rating. This movie is far better than critics are making it out to be. Anyone who would give this movie, or any movie, a ONE star rating is a pretty miserable person. Blackhat was a solid flick, as explained by others in some of the more positive reviews, and was sleek and beautifully shot. Michael Mann knows his business. It's not as good as Heat by any means (not much is), but don't be discouraged by all these negative reviews. Blackhat is a fairly typical Mann film. If you're a fan of the director you won't be disappointed. Plus they filmed in Hong Kong, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur. How freaking cool is that?