Blackhat opens on the planet Earth, lit with information. It then zooms down to a nuclear power plant in China, the camera gliding into the control room before squeezing into one of the computers. It navigates the geography of the circuitboards and settles on the inside of one the chips. Flashes of light represent transistors firing, bits of data being processed. There’s an abrupt cut to an external location, focusing on a hand typing ominously on a keyboard. Back in China, there are more flashes of light. A cooling fan in the reactor stops working. A disaster begins.
Blackhat is a messy, often ludicrous movie filled with elegant, powerfully realized moments like its opening prologue. It is a visual feast that only the likes of director Michael Mann can deliver. It is also a frustratingly paced slog through a plot that is all at once too simple and too obscure, filled with characters that end up explaining their coolness away. It is a deeply flawed film that remains deeply compelling, with long stretches of boredom interrupted by moments of transcendent beauty.
The film follows the fallout of the opening crisis. Chinese cybersecurity expert Chen Dawai (Wang Leehom) is assigned to track down the perpetrators. When the same tools are used to attack the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the FBI brings him in to help. Chen recognizes the code used in the attack, and says that they need the help of one man: his former MIT roommate Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), who is the original author of the code, and is serving thirteen years in federal prison. Hathaway is promised his freedom in exchange for his help, and soon he is flying around the world on the trail of these dangerous criminals.
The problems lie mainly in the script, which gets progressively ludicrous as it gets deeper into its runtime. As more of the villain is revealed, the process of catching him and stopping his plan becomes more and more arcane and intangible. The entire third act seems predicated on the villain making moves that seem contrary to his interests. It doesn’t help that the villain remains a vague entity for much of the runtime. The characters have to keep explaining what they’re doing, which really makes the movie drag. The oddly cast actors mumble their way through many of these explanations, the movie never gaining the clarity necessary to make all this style work.
And yet the style is still compelling. Gunfights are crisp and feel genuinely dangerous. Slivers of idle conversation are infused with atmosphere, imbuing them with meaning. Almost every frame feels menacing, Mann using a full complement of storytelling tools to enrich his scenes. It’s downright beautiful at times, the film willing to focus on stray details that other films might ignore: hands touching, the people in the background, a shadow looming at the end of a tunnel. In Blackhat, even a shot of a phone ringing is meticulously framed, the object given the power of the scene, its ringing suggesting all sorts of ominous things to come.
It isn’t enough to make Blackhat an easy recommendation though. It all still feels really clunky, and as much as this film seems to fit many of Mann’s obsessions, the script just isn’t right for the filmmaker. Mann requires a sleeker story, one with a plot that doesn’t get caught up in complex villainous schemes. But Blackhat is still really interesting. There are moments where it’s just so easy to forget how bad some of the components of the film are. But these are just moments when all is said and done. There’s a whole film to consider, and it just doesn’t quite work.
My Rating:
