BLACKHAT – The Review

Even just an average Michael Mann film is still a Michael Mann film – which isn’t a bad thing in my book. The man has a unique style that has developed over his career that’s often described as gritty, in your face, and just plain cool. This is mainly in part due to his more recent use of digital photography that he embraced starting with the movie COLLATERAL. It’s a storytelling choice that has produced a mixed bag of films but nevertheless feel like Mann films (though “man films” would be appropriate as well due to his knack for tough guy stories). BLACKHAT gives fans of Mann’s macho style what they have come to expect: a cold but mainly likable anti-hero, a world of elite cops and criminals, intense shoot-outs, and skylines lit with neon lights at night. All of this mind you, filmed with shaky camera work and layered with digital noise. BLACKHAT doesn’t serve as the most exciting crime game board Mann has played on, but it does give him the chance to show off all his usual tricks he’s learned over the years. He’s clearly a talented filmmaker that demands to be seen – especially since it has been 6 years since his last film – I just wish he might have waited for some material that was a little more engaging.

After a Chinese nuclear plant attack and a rapid rise and decline of specific goods in the stock market is ruled to be from the same attacker by Chinese investigator Chen (Wang Leehom), the Chinese government is forced to work with the American government to take down a cyber criminal who is using the same code that a famous cyber criminal developed long ago as a class project. This criminal is the often shirtless Thor – I mean Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth). With the help of a couple of US cyber security experts (Viola Davis and John Ortiz) and Chen’s kid sister (Wang Tei), Hathaway and Chen fight their way across the globe including Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Jarkata.

In the cyber crime world of BLACKHAT, hacking isn’t just two guys sitting across the world from each other punching keys on a keyboard in a virtual game of Battleship. Mann and first-time screenwriter Morgan Davis Foehl attempt to craft something more akin to a MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE adventure story. Our crack team of perfectly mixed, multi-ethnic crime fighters land in a different country almost every 30 minutes. Tracking criminals through HTML coding is no doubt tedious and boring for even the IT crowd, so instead we have chases through countries and gun fights in the streets. Of course the idea of all this is absolutely absurd, but Mann grounds it in such a way that you feel like your watching a techie Indiana Jones solve puzzles instead of an overweight kid in his mom’s basement. Some level of believability just has to be thrown out the window, even if that’s contrary to what Mann often proposes with his films.

Michael Mann has always been a director that’s connected with realism. His shoot-outs feel almost too real. It’s as if you’re right there in the action and it’s always incredibly loud. The intimacy of his conversations between characters feels too real. Like for example the beginning of COLLATERAL where Jada Pinkett Smith and Jamie Foxx discuss their lives and life goals in the cab. It’s weird than that Mann is attune to this in some cases in BLACKHAT (like the police procedural stuff) and yet other times he’s not (by structuring a story about hackers that are just as good at kicking ass and being Calvin Klein models). Yes, some of it works, others times though it feels far-fetched. For example, how does someone who works for the NSA just download an encrypted file to his or her computer without checking the legitimacy of it first?

Hemsworth follows in the footsteps of Mann’s previous tough guys: James Caan, William Petersen, Robert DeNiro, and Tom Cruise. He grimaces through most of his scenes and talks with an accent that sounds like someone from upstate New York with a mouthful of chili-dog. He’s barely audible at times, but then again, so many scenes go in and out due to terrible sound mixing. Viola Davis does shine when she’s on camera. There’s a gravitas to her performance, and she even gives the film a bit of humor as we witness her rule some of the boys with an iron fist. Nothing nice can be said of Tang Wei and the blossoming relationship that transpires between her and Hemsworth. If you take Colin Farrell’s love detour in the middle of MIAMI VICE, then double that agony and screen time but stick with the same lack of chemistry, than you’re about there.

BLACKHAT is another “Mannly” film through and through. Cars explode, bullets riddle bodies, blood is ceremoniously spilt, and bright lights ignite Asian streets, all in a way that only Michael Mann can produce. There’s an art to his films. No, it’s not high-art, but there’s still a level of calculated artistry to his crime-ridden worlds. BLACKHAT might be one of his least absorbing and least thrilling ventures into crime, but I can’t quite dismiss the confident and macho cool Mann has to offer.

Overall rating: 2.5 out of 5

BLACKHAT is now playing in theaters everywhere