Review of Blackhat (2015) by Notoriousfraud — 20 Jan 2015

I was let down by 'Blackhat', a movie from one of my favorite directors (Michael Mann) that seemed to have an interesting story that had relevance in the real world from the wake of the recent Sony hacks and the rise in cyber crimes that are perpetrated more and more in recent days.

However, the plot moves at an excruciatingly slow pace that would challenge even the most attentive viewer from falling asleep. There are multiple scenes that have no importance to the story that should have been cut out, it's like the movie was still on the editing table when it was sent to theaters.

There are a few good things about it, the gunfights were gritty and non exaggerated proving that Mann can still do decent gun play that is more accurate opposed to the infinite clip that we are used to seeing in many other movies, the cinematography is also very good and it was really nice to just look at the beautiful landscapes and backgrounds of the locations they filmed in Hong Kong and Jakarta.

The acting was a very mixed bag considering most of the main characters are miscast I mean come on Thor as a hacker come on, Viola Davis was the best part of the movie as the no nonsense Carol Barrett and it seemed she was the only one trying here.

My main fret with this movie is the Antagonist, he is never given the treatment that past Mann antagonists had. In 'Collateral' we had Tom Cruise give an excellent performance as Vincent, and in 'Heat' Robert DeNiro gave another fantastic performance as Neil McCauley.

What both of these characters have in common is that they are written terrifically. In Blackhat, not so much. The antagonist is not only miscast, but is written without an objective and there is no reason given for him to cause destruction other than 'just because'.

Blackhat is a competently directed but slackly written thriller that will most likely bore audiences than thrill them.