War of The Movies: 5/10



Rotten Tomatoes: 31 %

Genres: Action, Crime, Drama

Runtime: 133 min

Director: Michael Mann

Writer: Morgan Davis Foehl

Chris Hemsworth as Nick Hathaway

Leehom Wang as Chen Dawai

Viola Davis as Carol Barrett

Wei Tang as Chen Lien

Plot of Blackhat 2015

The story begin when a nuclear power plant in china explode due to the malfunction of computer safeguards. The cyber security team of the government correctly assume that the problem was caused by a remote hacker. To track him, they ask their best element, Officer Chen Dawai, to use anything he can to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The solution comes under the form of Nick Hathaway, played by Chris Hemsworth, a hacker who’s purging a prison sentence in the United-States. Described as a MIT Genius and programmer extraordinaire, Hathaway will track down the blackhat hacker in exchange for his freedom from a 5×9 cell in a maximum security prison.

Should you go see it?

Let’s just say that this movie don’t really justify going to the cinema to see it. Blackhat is the kind of movie you pick when you already are in the cinema. Lord of The Ring or The Hobbit are the kind of movie you actually set up a date to go see but Blackhat is just a movie to pass time once there.

What I liked about the movie

I think the production team made a great representation of programming and introduction to Linux. A few times during the movie, I could see the screen of Mr. Hathaway and what he was trying to do. The Linux commands he was typing actually made sense. It might not be very important for the non-programmer audience but once again, the movie is mostly targeting programmer. So in this case, it becomes very important. I can’t recount the number of times in Hollywood movie where I see a programmer just start typing without a command window or even pressing the space bar. I can tell you right now, being a PHP/MySQL and Python programmer, it’s just not possible.

What I didn’t like about the movie

The first part of the movie was good but not great. They developed the story pretty well but the train wreck happened in the second part of the movie. At some point, there is so much development and numerous scene that you start to lose attention. There was a lot of scene that could have been cut. If it wasn’t for the beautiful Chen Lien, I would have found the movie bad on all account. One hour after the movie started, you start to feel like it just won’t end. And in the movie business, it’s not a good thing because I actually wanted it to end. I don’t like saying bad things like this but it is necessary. Blackhat had a lot of potential. Great actors, great story and a blockbuster actor like Chris Hemsworth to attract people to come see it. The only major problem was that they should have cut a lot of unimportant scene which would have made this movie a great film.

Conclusion

This is the kind of movie you rent at the DVD store or wait until Netflix release it, otherwise, don’t bother. If you are a programmer, you might want to give it a try just to see Linux portrayed on big screen, AWESOME. When I went to see it, the cinema had attributed one of cheapest theater room for the showing. It didn’t bode well for the movie and when I went inside, there wasn’t more than 6 persons, me included, to watch it. So I think that my sentiment about the movie was shared. If you are a fan of Chris Hemsworth, I recommend to see Thor or The Avengers instead.

Your opinion

You don’t agree with my opinion? Don’t be shy and share your thoughts on the movie. Its one of the best part of writing movie review is when someone introduce a new perspective and for ever, your vision of the movie change. I just love it. Also, don’t be shy, share this article with your friends. Sharing is caring!!! My twitter account: @simonsayz2014