Blackhat (2015)

The Worst Film Ever

Simply Perfect

A Masterpiece!

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This movie is shot artistically to unfold a story that is not a usual cliche action movie plot. Real command lines are also a balm for a viewer's eye as opposed to the usual gibberish and pretty looking 3D interfaces.

When i saw this movie for the first time i didn't understand it... the movie seemed surprisingly realistic at times especialy the shooting scenes and other times as it is said in the movie at some point "overwritten" Well now after few yeas i see it as a masterpiece! there is no way Michael Mann can slip... you may think so because he really wants to keep his idiocracies which is part of the artistic expression. Everithing in this movie is well calibrated, the lightning, camera angles, he communicates trough every color and sound, i can see Mann's spirit in every scene :) which is a sign of a true story teller! and Hemsworth did a fantastic job expressing Mann's point of view.

Blackhat is full of highly improbable and patently implausible scenarios that add up to the ultimate shortcoming of the movie. The antagonist begins by blowing a nuclear reactor and then manipulating the soy market, after which the Feds zero in right away on the scheme and those who benefited. Yet, in his grand scheme, the antagonist expects to corner the tin market without consequence?!?! C'mon...And did I mention tin? TIN?!?! Of all the commodities in the world, this bad guy goes after a low margin staple produced in a country (Malaysia) that isn't even in the top six countries producing tin! Then there's the protagonist, who we're expected to believe can hack into the NSA computers. C'mon...The acting is incongruous and the sound editing was terrible. When dealing with Asian actors, this latter issue becomes ever more important, as they tend to have a softer timbre. The lack of attention to sound had many of the participants mumbling, or the dialogue fading in and out.But the real "nail in the coffin" was seeing Michael Mann's name attached to this mess. Is this the same man who directed Manhunter, Last of the Mohicans, Heat and Thief? I expected a much better film coming from an MM production. Still, there's several action sequences that move the flick along, for which I give it four stars.

I really enjoyed this film.I have little to no idea about hacking, but I was able to keep up with the plot and really enjoyed it throughout. Michael Mann is definitely a serious director with loads of slomo sequences of people looking very stern and then having sex very intensely, it could be so stupid but he treads a thin line really well. This film is certainly of a piece with the rest of his work (I haven't seem Ali,), there are some familiar characters and tropes at work here, if you're a fan (I am) it's definitely not a bad thing.Some of the camera-work during the action sequences was really engrossing, he really got right in there and made It feel appropriately brutal and frenetic. I especially love the mixing of wide angle shots and what felt more conventional coverage, really cool, really crafted an atmosphere, And his music is always great, from Tangerine Dream onwards it's been cool!I think Mann is a director who still tries to push things forward, from experimenting with the audio perspective on Public Enemy to Hi-Def cameras on Collateral, I think he tries stuff out and commits which is commendable with so much money behind you, it's easy to not try anything new and then call putting up a Greenscreen the future. For all his experimenting he definitely has got a style which I think I would describe as being the good side of 80's. He reminds me a little of Friedkin, they both used Tangerine Dream!Viola Davis was really cool in this, she has some great delivery of very cutting lines.I never want to like Chris Hemsworth, he's too ripped to be a computer nerd and way too handsome. But I actually didn't question any of that once it got going, despite my want for him to be annoying he's a really likable actor and although at first I thought the accent was gonna be a bit dodgy, once again I went with it (on second thought this could be because he doesn't really say a lot and has a good line in looking moody).I liked the plot. I liked the bad guys! I like that they were awfully nasty but then turned around and seemed to care about their mate who was gonna die. Nice touch!I missed this at the cinema and assumed it was gonna be rubbish because it had a tiny release over here, but it was great! My girlfriend really enjoyed it too, although she couldn't keep up with the hacking stuff and nearly ruined the film asking me questions. That's not a criticism of this film though that's definitely on her.Apparently this isn't for everyone but I don't know why, I thought it was great and sadly overlooked.