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What do you mean, "Michael who?" Michael MANN. The guy who made action thrillers legitimate with stuff like Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, and Collateral. Then he made Miami Vice and Public Enemies which were at least ok, I guess, then he took a six year hiatus. And what did he come up with after all that time off? Blackhat, a movie with Liam Hemsworth as a computer hacker who uses his computer hacking skills to hack computers in a full-throttle computer-hacking chase to find and stop another computer hacker. And Hemsworth falls "in love" with the only girl in the movie who isn't Viola Davis, but you already knew that.
Michael Mann somewhow managed to direct the film while drunk or possibly comatose, using a screenplay that he co-wrote along with someone named Morgan Davis Foehl. Foehl is probably a 12-year-old, in which case, good for him for getting his first screenplay made! Alternately, he could be a con artist out to get Hollywood for all it's worth, in which case...good for him for getting his first screenplay made!
"Ok, haha, but what is the movie actually about?" you may well ask, you reasonable person, you. Well, I already told you pretty much everything. It's about computer hacking and as much as the movie thinks it is a wild, exciting ride, it is just as uninteresting as a movie about people who sit at computers typing could be.
I am amused by the idea of the cast and crew having been given directions on behalf of Mr. Mann by someone who has not yet mastered the English language. This person would shout, "Say words! Do action!" while shoving into the hands of the actors the blank pages that Foehl claimed contained the screenplay. With little else to do, everyone would make the best of the situation and just re-enact thriller-style scenes like they've seen in many other movies, while the editors did their best to make it look like they centered around a story. The result was multiple scenes where all that occurs is one character saying something vague about the plot, another character affirming what the first character said, and all the characters in the scene staring dramatically either at each other or out the window, followed by a montage of skyscrapers.
We also get lovely (approximate) dialogue like this:
"They know your face. let's meet up tomorrow at that place we went that one time."
"I guess we're going to China now."
In all seriousness, Blackhat is a rather baffling movie in that its already uninteresting story (which, I must add, includes a dull villain whose actions range from changing the stock market to killing people, but with intentions that are entirely unclear) is made even more boring by being very detail-oriented about things we couldn't possibly care about. For example, everytime anybody goes anywhere, they can't just jump there using movie time logic. The filmmakers seem to think we need to know how they got there, I guess cause we're stupid and easily confused, which means we get multiple scenes of people flying, walking, driving, waiting... Seeing as how the movie is needlessly over two hours in length, a good half hour could have been shaved off by cutting these scenes of people in-between places.
But whatever. Fairness forces me to point out that Mann's direction really isn't to blame here, because he has made a very good-looking, competently-paced movie that does have a couple scenes towards the end that are actually kind of exciting. That does not, however, make up for the fact that what is happening during this good-looking movie is of literally no interest whatever to any human being who ever lived.
I take that back. Perhaps you are a braindead or spectacularly dull individual. In that case, Blackhat will thrill you to China and back. If you are a normal person, though, you will probably be as bored as I was.
But good for Morgan Davis Foehl for getting his first screenplay made, bless his heart.
D+
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