Review of Blackhat (2015) by Nathan M — 19 Jan 2015

What happened here? Director Michael Mann has always been known for his cold and calculating style when it comes to filmmaking, but I don't know that he's ever been referred to as boring. To give you an idea of how slow and uninteresting this film is, it opens with a three minute montage of a computer being hacked as we see every part of the computer being invaded. From there we move through countless scenes of monotonous intelligence agency leaders talking about what to do as we rehash mostly repetitive information over and over again.

But this wouldn't be that big of a deal if there were some good action sequences in this action-thriller. There aren't. There are three action sequences that I could count. Two that were shot well, in the signature Michael Mann-digital style, but are mostly uneventful. And one that was actually pretty interesting, but takes place in the last 5 minutes of the film. What did Mann think was interesting here?

Finally, there are zero characters in the film. With some fantastic actors like Hemsworth, who has proved himself time and time again, and Viola Davis you'd be expecting at least some good performances. But their not here. The characters are flat, and I learned absolutely nothing about them. Except for one horrendous reveal about Davis' character that clearly is just an attempt to force emotion into a scene. I couldn't care less about any of these people, and so when they're in any situation, whether it's danger or a romance that comes out of nowhere, I just don't care.

Blackhat fails on every account other than Mann still brings a solid visual style to the film. The whole movie just seems like a string of random scenes that don't have any organic transition between them. It's boring and it's emotionless.