Blackhat - Review Thread

Michael Mann is arguably one of the most interesting directors still around today, and in his hands, a cyber thriller starring Chris Hemsworth sounded promising, and the trailers looked pretty tense as well. But alas, what we have here is a mediocre movie any way you slice it, with not even Mann being able to raise it up all that much. The central problem with Blackhat is the screenplay, which takes an interesting, and admittedly timely, premise and fails to give it any real sense of tension or intrigue. As with any Michael Mann film, it's technically well put-together, and boasts that same ice-cold "cool" feel other films of his do, not to mention it has a trademark Michael Mann shootout, but there's rarely ever a reason to care about any of the characters nor what they're trying to prevent. No matter how many scenes of Chris Hemsworth and co. frantically typing away on keyboards while studying a computer screen with slit-like eyes Mann puts in, there's always an emotional disconnect with the material that makes the movie more tedious than anything else, despite everybody's best efforts. And instead of going out with a bang like Collateral or Heat, Blackhat goes out with a whimper. Well, actually, the whole film is more of a whimper than anything else, as interesting as watching unintelligible code flash by on a computer screen.

**/****