'Blackhat’ review: Michael Mann movie bombs

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/Blackhat-review-Michael-Mann-movie-bombs-6016040.php

By Mick LaSalle
SFGate.com
January 15, 2015

You ever see a garbage truck unload? It backs up slowly and stops, the 
back door drops, and a cascade of wet, smelly junk comes rolling and 
tumbling out. Releasing a movie in January is something like that. Aside 
from the 2014 releases going wide following Oscar-qualifying runs in Los 
Angeles, what makes it into theaters in January is generally pretty raw 
merchandise.

So the January release of “Blackhat,” the latest film from a major 
American director, Michael Mann (“Heat,” “The Last of the Mohicans”) was a 
real mystery. And it remained a mystery until about 10 or 15 minutes into 
the film, when the mental image returned, of that garbage truck backing up 
very slowly ...

“Blackhat” is a film about cybercrime that is, at first, difficult to 
follow, and later, perfectly clear and preposterous. A hacker or a team of 
hackers causes a Chinese nuclear reactor to blow, and China and the United 
States team up to stop them before they can strike again. That means 
springing from prison the one genius hacker smart enough to beat the 
hackers at their own game. He’s played by Chris Hemsworth, because that’s 
what computer geniuses look like in the movies.

Mann suffocates “Blackhat” with style. The trouble starts in the opening 
scene, in which he shows how the Remote Access Trojan makes its way from 
the hackers to the nuclear reactor. He does this by having the camera go 
below the floor and then zip along miles of cable and, of course, we have 
no idea what we’re looking at, and it’s not particularly interesting.

[...]

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