Blackhat
Published 2015-06-23
Film info
- Title Blackhat
- Director Michael Mann
- Year 2015
- Run time 2hr 13m
- Genres Action, Thriller, Crime
- Tagline We are no longer in control
- Cast Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis
Set within the world of global cybercrime, Blackhat follows a furloughed convict and his American and Chinese partners as they hunt a high-level cybercrime network from Chicago to Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Jakarta.
Live blog
| Time | Comment |
|---|---|
| 2:49 | What an amazing zoom in sequence. Don't know how realistic, but v. impressive. |
| 9:00 | Dude's doing upside down push-ups. As if that's even possible. |
| 15:37 | Remote access tool. Rat. Got it. |
| 17:18 | "You want the DOJ to do anything other than laugh?" |
| 20:21 | Love him turning it into a negotiation. |
| 23:37 | Imagine getting your hands on a laptop for the first time after a lengthy stay in prison. Mmm, internets. |
| 26:42 | They've gone a bit over the top with the low rumble, getting right inside my head that was. |
| 29:26 | "Am I being tangible?" She's awesome. |
| 39:04 | He's instantly attracted to a computer, the minute he walks into a room. |
| 44:13 | Tut tut, hold off the chase for a bit of romance, of course. |
| 1:01:07 | Echoing gunshots sound amazing on good speakers! |
| 1:10:21 | Turns out smashing an axe around a just-exploded nuclear reactor isn't the best idea. Whodathunkit. |
| 1:16:46 | He works for the NSA and still clicks attachments. There's no hope! |
| 1:23:58 | Aw, not nice to see him all defeated like that. |
| 1:24:36 | She literally just said "Who do I go with?" Then started shouting they were making decisions for her. Rage. |
| 1:28:59 | Even knowing the tracking device was there, I still didn't see that coming. Jeez. |
| 1:33:53 | There's no one left to track him anyway, what difference does it make? |
| 1:38:40 | She does look like a mini Lara there, which is something. |
| 1:42:19 | Car hanging from a roof, as you do. |
| 1:43:20 | I have that actual external drive. Fun! |
| 1:58:55 | I wonder how many hackers now how to use a gun like that. |
Thoughts
Such high hopes for this. A film about hackers starring Thor that looked actually quite good and realistic? Amazing.
No, it wasn't. The first 15 minutes held up well under Mr C's scrutiny, but then it all went massively downhill.
Production values were shockingly bad. The overdubs were awful. In fact, there were bits of the subtitled Chinese conversations that were also dubbed but not well - as though we weren't meant to notice because we should have been too busy reading.
The scene in the middle, racing around dockyards with Go Pros on, felt massively disconnected from the rest. The footage was wobbly, it didn't fit the rest, and it didn't make a lot of sense plot-wise either.
The scriptwriters tried a shock tactic of having a bit ol' shoot-out by the roadside about two thirds of the way through, but what they failed to understand is that they killed off all the people we actually cared about. These were good, smart cops and the most interesting part of the whole story.
Instead, we were left with bland and sulky Chris Hemsworth, and the most irritating of sidekick women who couldn't distinguish between her happy and sad face, and got annoyed at the boys making all the decisions for her but wasn't capable of making her own.
We got to the end, but only for a sense of completion rather than entertainment. Blackhat was just all kinds of bad. Avoid.
Rating: 1 / 5