Blackhat *** (2015, Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, Wei Tang, Leehom Wang, Ritchie Coster) – Movie Review

Director Michael Mann‘s thinking person’s action cyber-thriller is a competent, sometimes exciting entertainment. But it is also frustrating as it feels like there’s a much better movie trying to break out of if, and ultimately it must be judged a watchable misfire, and disappointment from the classy director of Heat, The Insider and Collateral. Nevertheless, Mann’s legion of fans will need to check it out, and may well find some very good things to say about it.

Chris Hemsworth is a very welcome star presence, great in the running and action departments. But he sports a none-too-convincing American accent and sometimes seems a bit lost as Nick Hathaway, a long-term computer hacker convict who is paroled with American and Chinese agent partners to hunt a high-level cybercrime network.

He swaps a 15-year sentence in jail for a life-or-death trip from Chicago to Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Jakarta after parts of a computer code he wrote during his youth appear in a malware that triggered a terrorist attack in factory in China. Bodies pile up around him, so he better keep running fast, but at least he has the consolation of an unlikely love affair with heroine Wei Tang.

I didn’t care at all for Mann’s continuing use if his pioneering digital video filming here. Yes, it gives an immediate feel to the drama and the action, but no it’s only a forced, strapped-on device, like the shaky-cam of found footage filming. And, in a two and a quarter hour film, it gets irritating, borderline annoying, especially when we get to be over-acquainted with the back of Hemsworth’s ear in big close-up. Hemsworth is one of the nicer looking people on the planet, what’s the point of making him look tired and wrecked all the time?

Nor did I personally care for the synthesiser twinkling music. Mann should probably have stuck to the original work of composer Harry Gregson-Williams, instead of using only a small percentage of his score and replacing it with compositions by Atticus Ross and Leopold Ross.

But visuals and score are very much to taste. Some audiences, especially Mann’s diehard fans, will relish those on display here. And that’s fine, they’ll really enjoy the movie a whole lot more.

The story? Well, I think muddled and confusing are the best words. the plot is pretty hard, if not impossible to follow. I know it’s probably meant to be. But clearer would be better. At any rate we get the general drift. The movie’s first half hour lacks focus, as Mann tries to establish a grip on plot and characters that is quite elusive here. Blackhat does then perk up, especially when Mann chucks in some great action sequences with the fights and shootouts he’s so good , as with Heat and Collateral. Alas Blackhat isn’t nearly as good as either of those, but it is a decent enough thriller if you approach it with modest expectations and not look to it as a misunderstood masterpiece.

It’s a shame that for all Hemsworth’s undeniable appeal and magnetism, his character never really becomes ‘real’ and exciting, like Cruise’s in Collateral for example, or maybe like Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne. Nick Hathaway remains an elusive, shadowy persona, and we never really seem to get to know him, or really believe in him. Yes. he’s gone from nice computer hacker to hardened criminal with fighting skills in jail, but how has he become a marksman and arms expert?  How come he falls instantly for heroine Wei Tang? It’s supposed to be true love, I guess, but it just feels like a plot device.

Viola Davis‘s grouchy FBI agent Carol Barrett isn’t a very persuasive character, either, and nor really is Leehom Wang‘s Chinese agent Chen Dawai, the heroine’s brother. The villains are just the usual regulation you get in an average Bond movie, with the super-villain Ritchie Coster kept to the end and finally a bit of a let-down.

So much about Blackhat doesn’t feel real that it seems worth complaining about it. But then, it’s only a movie, and only a fairly good one that has good sets but can’t quite raise its game to win its match.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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