User reviews

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 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!!!

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.

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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.

'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.

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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").

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

"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.

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

I have been looking forward to Blackhat for a couple of months now, and was able to see the movie on the am showing on it's first full day. What a thrill ride! Before I go into the details of why I loved this movie, I should point out where my perspective on a movie like this will be different than most, as reflected in some of the bad early reviews.

I have a Bachelors in Information Systems and a Masters in Information Security Assurance. I have worked in technology for 18 years now, the last 5 of that almost exclusively in the security end of the tech pool. Based upon my experience in the field and my recent exhaustive research into information security, I found the film to be a refreshing change from the typical rehashed Hollywood fantasy that is put out regarding anything with a computer chip installed.

The problem with how computers are depicted in most movie in television is that the capabilities of computers are completely overstated or just plain irrational. It is as if directors think technical hyperbole will make up for a lack of everyday viewer sophistication with computer science. I get that the majority of the population hasn't studied computers as a major and most know only as much as they need to to get online and send emails or watch Youtube. This is completely understandable.

However, with technology being so ubiquitous in today's world, I am a bit astounded at he flack a director gets when he attempts to use realistic computing in a movie. With all of the Androids, iOS devices, multiple computer households, and the increasing popularity of Linux operating systems, one would think that the average computer IQ of America was much higher than it was 20 years ago.

In reality, if computers are depicted in realistic terms in film, most people just wont get it. I blame this partly on shows like Star Trek and Star Wars (which I love, for what they are) that fantasize what computers may be like in 200 years. I also blame it on the epidemic of fantasy movies that seem to base nothing on reality but continue to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars from movie goers world wide.

At the end of the day, Michael Mann did a FANTASTIC job of depicting the real life of network engineers and computer scientists in this movie. Commands entered on screen followed conventional Unix command line format and were syntactically correct. You could tell Mann had done his research and hired true computing consultants in the writing of the script.

In addition, the attacks on the PLA systems that run the pumps used to cause the reactor meltdown and later planned for the mines was almost flawlessly realistic. That is in fact how those systems work and how attackers would compromise them across the Internet. Further, the types of attacks are entirely plausible given real world research conducted by the NSA, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and others. In addition, passing malware through PDF files by email is one of the most prominent ways that attackers take over computers in the real world, but viewer comments indicate they believe this to be too silly to be believable. Well as a security analyst, I can tell you to believe that scenario happens millions of times every year But, because we didn't have excessive flashing lights and cartoonish villains with a master plan to take over the entire world, the movie gets panned.

The reviews for Blackhat remind me of those for Miami Vice. In each instance, extensive research was done into the worlds of the criminals that served as the basis for the lead characters. But too much realism tends to bring out the boo birds who would rather focus on comic book heros that shoot lighting out of their eyeballs or fly around in steel suits too impossibly heavy to be powered by anything short of a large nuclear reactor while fighting off giant skyscraper-sized space worms.

Perhaps audiences would rather have compete fantasy in their movies. Perhaps we cannot appreciate anything that attempts the least bit of realism. However, I absolutely loved Blackhat for the same reason I loved Miami Vice. Michael Mann made an adult movie largely based upon fact that requires minimal amounts of escapism while requiring the viewer to use their intellect and actually think during the movie. For his efforts, I applaud him.

Lastly, this movie should serve as a warning to all those who are unaware of the rampant security issues that the US (the whole world actually) faces in this day and age. From a security analyst's perspective, the realism was welcome cautionary tale that needs to continued to be told until the general public gets it.

There's no sugar coating it, Blackhat is terrible. It has agonizingly slow pace, stupid logic and a barrage of tech lingo which withers your will to watch it till the end. It's surprising that this is the work of Michael Mann who produced much superior film, Collateral, more than a decade ago. Chris Hemsworth as lead is willing, he makes the best out of his character, even if it seems he's lost most of the time.

The story revolves around a cyber terrorist attack on Hong Kong nuclear plant. Chris Hemsworth, because his screen name isn't memorable enough, is called to consult on apprehending the hacker responsible for this act. At first glance this is supposed to be cerebral endeavor, but it does not even come close. In fact, regular mundane investigation requires arduous effort. Finding the simplest clues will take five minutes of narrative, and this is done with incredibly alienating script. Plenty of terms that might not be familiar to audience, and even if that's not an issue, the movie repeats itself too many times without adding much.

There is no satisfying master plan, or even basic plan at all. Characters make the bad decisions such as not taking cover in fire fight or doing illicit deed in public, these are supposed to be agents sent to resolve international incident and mastermind behind it. In no realistic realm these scenarios could work, but they stupidly do, only for the sake of the plot. It disappoints in every turn, after all the nifty computer screen, I daresay Fast & Furious 5 plan of dragging bank vault makes more sense.

If the movie does anything right, it's the use of setting and cinematography. Michael Mann has a certain style which produces an authentic feel of any place the characters play in. Some scenes extenuate the long pace with unbridled view of buildings and the city. Unfortunately, with such thin substance it feels like a long boring drive at best.

Went to see this movie attracted by the topic and leading actor. The movie was weird and even special effects made no sense. I thought it was maybe me being tired but of the 15 people in the theater 9 left the movie before it ended. I was the tenth. I consider myself an open minded person and tried to give the benefit of the doubt to this film, however everything has a limit. There is a miss match among actors, action scenes and translation to English of Chinese talks and vice versa. Don not get me wrong, Chris Hemsworth was very good. Movie is Extremely Slow. Maybe was expecting a typical American film, but this is definitely no Miami vice either. Hope this helps to save someone money to other readers. Thanks

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?