"After a Hong Kong nuclear plant and the Mercantile Trade Exchange in Chicago are hacked by unknown perpetrators, a federal agent (Viola Davis) proposes that the FBI work with China to find the cyber-criminals."
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"Blackhat" starts with a very long and drawn out scene of following the 1's and 0's of an electronic command that sets off an explosion at a nuclear plant. I mean, they really loved this sequence to the point that it got old fast. And then they repeated it.
Law enforcement agencies try to track the person responsible and their go-to guy is a computer hacker doing 15 years in prison (Hemsworth).
Once the story picks up, it continues on a very slow spiral of upward energy that never quite grabs the viewer until about two hours into the story.
Chris Hemsworth sounds like himself, but acts like a very bored or depressed human, as he is directed to try and convey the serious nature of a hacker computer expert. The guy who got the 'get out of jail free' card to help the good guys catch the bad guys.
Despite the boredom, it gets worse. The film tries to develop an atmosphere in various scenes that begs the viewer to hit their 30-second jump button. Often. There are many scenes that could be spelled out in under 30 seconds and Mann takes two to five minutes with them. I mean, OMG, it should not take five minutes to walk down a hall!!!
This film lasts just under 2 hours and 20 minutes. If Mann had not "artistically" drawn out so many scenes, I bet this could have been a 90-minute film.
And then when there are the action scenes and Mann's version of shaky-cam. WTF?
In our very first action scene, what could have been a 'fun' action scene with Hemsworth kicking ass, becomes a choppy-cam set of scenes. With very low-key music in the background. It's like they want to bore you to death with this movie. But despite the music, the shaky-cam effect looks like they tried to create them digitally instead of with two guys holding a tarp with the cameraman in it.
At this point the film almost begs to be shut off. Or as one review from Empire puts it,
"A competent procedural rather than the ground-breaking cybersaga we’d hoped for. But as with Miami Vice, Mann’s boundless style does a remarkable job of disguising the lack of substance."
Once you get to the one-hour mark, it does start to pick up. A tiny bit.
The film got a 34% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5.4/10 on IMDb.
If you like long, slow, drawn out dramatic productions, this film would be perfect for you. IF you like your Michael Bay action sets, THIS IS NOT IT.
Though I must say, the final scene, after all the fast-forwarding, where good meets bad for the final showdown, was pretty good. Then again, brussel sprouts would seem pretty good too after this film.
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Just in case there are any Chris Hemsworth fans in the audience, Hemsworth stuff on Amazon.
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