Blackhat

Michael Mann’s worst movie to date, Blackhat follows jailed superhacker Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) as he’s released from prison and forced to assist authorities in tracking down a high-level cybercrime network. It’s rather astonishing the degree to which Blackhat fails to even partially capture the viewer’s attention and interest, as Mann, along with scripter Morgan Davis Foehl, establishes an atmosphere of punishing pointlessness right from the get-go and perpetuates it for the duration of the movie’s interminable 133 minute (!) running time. Mann’s now-typically uncinematic modus operandi – what is this guy’s obsession with shoddy, low-rent digital cinematography? – goes a long way towards exacerbating the movie’s thoroughly unwatchable vibe, and it doesn’t help, either, that the narrative has been suffused with long stretches in which absolutely nothing of interest occurs (ie it’s just a lot of dull chatter about IP addresses and illegal servers). It’s clear, too, that Blackhat suffers from an almost total lack of engaging, three-dimensional characters, with Hemsworth’s flat (and, frankly, boring) turn as the protagonist merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of the film’s hopeless inability to offer up a single compelling figure. (Hemsworth’s less-than-charismatic turn is made all-the-more-insufferable by Nicholas’ ongoing romance of Wei Tang’s Lien Chen, with the actress’ laughably inept performance compounding the ineffectiveness of the characters’ coupling.) Even the action sequences, which should’ve been the highlight here, manage to disappoint, as Mann infuses such moments with a jittery, documentary-like feel that effectively drains them of their impact and excitement. And although the movie improves slightly in its final half hour – ie the narrative finally simplifies to the extent that one is able to muster up just a smidgen of interest – Blackhat has long since established itself as a total disaster that (hopefully) marks the final nail in the coffin that is Mann’s career.

* out of ****