Review of Blackhat (2015) by Harry W — 28 Feb 2016

Somehow managing to plunge the combined talents of Michael Mann and Chris Hemsworth into huge box-office failure, Blackhat was one of those films I had to see to be sure of how bad it could be.

Ultimately, I soon realized Blackhat was a terrible film because it was one of the worst kinds of bad: it's just plain boring. Blackhat can't decide whether it wants to be a techno-crime thriller or a straight up action thriller. Most of the film's story would suggest the former, but the casting of Chris Hemsworth and the sporadic action scenes hint at a different angle. It follows the same flawed story path as Simon West's Wild Card (2013) in that it sounds like an action thriller on the surface yet ends up being a pretentiously slow piece heavy on talking yet short on character development.

Given that Blackhat moves along at a plodding pace too slow to establish much of a tense atmosphere, its only real tense moments come from the action scenes which offer a modicum of atmosphere at best. Michael Mann proves that he still maintains a strong eye for imagery as a director during these scenes since the cinematography and editing boasts the greatest production values that Blackhat has on offer. Yet the fact that these are the best moments of the film contradict the sensibility of the story since they fail to fit in place with the script. The main character is a computer hacker, not a mercenary. Yet given the casting of Chris Hemsworth it's easy to see why viewers might see otherwise. After 40 minutes of emotionless dialogue producing a story which has actually gone nowhere, a fight suddenly breaks out which lasts a few seconds before the story returns to fretting over all the little details in the story, aside from those that would actually make the film entertaining. The action scenes are too far and in-between for Blackhat to even pass as a guilty pleasure.

Basically, the story in Blackhat follows a formula that is all wrong for it. After a hacker starts causing trouble, the heroes of the story end up playing a game of cat and mouse with him only to uncover new secrets and lose associates along the way. It tries to be innovative by using a story about a hacker this time and having all kinds of computer-related jargon fill up the dialogue, but the relevance of a threat that hacking presents is hardly as entertaining on the big screen as the more conventional terrorist raids from your standard action film. The conventional side of Blackhat is reserved for everything else in the story due to its excess of repetitive plot points stemming from the formula, with no cliche more frustrating than the unnecessary and emotionally distant romantic subplot. It's purely there out of obligation, not because it actually adds anything.

The production of this film must have been hell because the very idea that this film actually cost $70 million really puzzles me. The scenery is decent and the action scenes are handled with technial skill, but to spend that much money without buying a good script or actually creating an impressive spectacle is an example of failure at its worst. For an accomplished director like Michael Mann to create a colossal failure with such a large budget is truly a remarkable error, a fall from grace for the filmmaker. It's definitely one of his most generic works which manages to stretch on for more than two hours by moving slower than humanly acceptable.

The casting of Chris Hemsworth in the lead role for Blackhat is commonly considered one of its biggest problems. Straight off the bat from playing the titular role in Thor: The Dark World (2013), you'd think that Chris Hemsworth would have sufficient star power to propel Blackhat to box office glory. Unfortunately, he hasn't been out of that role long enough to lose the muscular frame that empowers the character. Considering that his later on in the same year as Blackhat he proved his determination to lose most of his body fat for the leading role in In The Heart of the Sea (2015), one can't question why he didn't do the same for Blackhat since it's a huge challenge to believe any man solely dedicated to life as a computer hacker would carry the same body type as a superhero. It proves to do the man well during the action scenes, but it offers no credibility to the narrative. You could argue that Nicholas Hathaway gained his brooding frame by dedicating his prison time to gaining muscle mass as many criminals have a tendency to do, but even relying on that as an implied plot point is a cop out. But going beneath the strictly physical traits of Chris Hemsworth, even his natural charisma stumbles amid the dull script of Blackhat. Chris Hemsworth's accent articulation is not his finest technique since there are moments where his Australian accent drops in and out of his dialogue amid a rather stereotypical American accent. The role is an archetype and he portrays it as such, and though his ability to procure physical tension offers restrained spirit in some scenes and propels the man through the action scenes, there is nothing about his character or performance in Blackhat which should please his fans. The fault lies more in the script than in his performance, but either way he is certainly miscast.

Tang Wei similarly falters in her role. As the writers couldn't decide whether to make her character a determined network engineer or simply damsel in distress, Tang Wei is stuck in a one-dimensional character who provides little more than the romantic interest of Chris Hemsworth. The actress is not offered any scene which isn't conventional, nor is she put on a pedestal as a product of sex appeal which means that both the highest and lowest class of audience should end up finding her performance forgettable. Tang Wei has too much screen time for someone without a character.

Blackhat fails to succeed as a thriller because its pace is too slow and its story is too conventional, and the sporadic attempts to turn it into an action thriller are as misplaced as the casting of Chris Hemsworth as a computer hacker.