Blackhat (USA, 2015)

Nine Things About the Movie Blackhat

1. This was directed by Michael Mann, who is probably most famous for his 1995 crime classic "Heat". And "Blackhat" definitely has Mann's trademark cool look and feel. But something went very wrong somewhere. The movie seems like it was made by someone pretending to be Michael Mann.

2.  It's about a mysterious computer hacker attacking various places around the world for unknown reasons. The Chinese and American governments get together to catch the bad guy. In order to do that, they must release a buff, hunky computer hacker named Nicholas Hathaway from jail,

3. This film is great proof that a movie can be complicated without actually being smart.

4. There is a lot of cyber-jargon used in this movie. Computer experts say it's pretty accurate. They're the only ones that will know, because the movie doesn't really try to explain anything.

5. Every 20 minutes or so, the movie slows down because the heroes have run out of leads.  So Hathaway will look confused for a minute, get the "light bulb" look, and then tell everybody of an idea he just had that will lead the heroes down a new path. This path will last for about 20 more minutes. Repeat this step for about two hours, and the movie is over.

6. There's also a completely predictable and unnecessary romance that develops between Hathaway and a teammate. It's supposed to add some emotional tension to the group, but all it really does is bring the movie to a grinding stop, wasting any momentum that the movie had built up.

7. As the movie progresses, it gets more action-packed but less believable. And for an MIT computer hacker spending years in jail, Hathaway is surprisingly good in gunfights and knife battles.

8. This movie was not only the first box-office flop of 2015, it's one of the biggest box-office flops in history. A week after being released in US theaters, its scheduled release in Australia was canceled - which is where the star, Chris Hemsworth, is from.

9. This could have been a good movie. I don't know what happened. But in the end, it's just a way to give computer geeks to a fantasy where they get to be an action hero, and also get a girlfriend.