*review* Blackhat

Blackhat

or how everything you need to see is in the trailer.

         Blackhat starring Chris Hemsworth and relative unknown actor Leehom Wang ,  is the single most incredibly, spectacularly, dull film to come out this year.   Let me clarify, the story of Blackhat follows Chinese operative Chen Dawai, played by Wang, as he is enlisted by the Chinese government to work with the FBI in locating a cyber terrorist that sabotaged one of their nuclear plants.  after one look at the hackers work he realizes  that this cyber terrorist is crazy good and is involved in some pretty serious bad-guy stuff so he enlists the help of his sister Chen Lien(Wei Tang) a computer analyst and his old college buddy Nick Hathaway(Hemsworth) who is currently doing serious time for his own cyber crimes.   Once he convinces the FBI to release Hathaway they crew seeks to hunt down the terrorist and unveil his plans and doing so is going to involve typing, Lots and lots of typing.   

      The problem with the film is that it completely gives you the cyber part of its genera but never delivers the thriller aspect.   I basically spent a 133 minutes watching people work at a desk job  which is boring enough to actually do for a career let alone pay to watch someone else do it.  The technobabble was also a very serious problem in the film as many of the terminology came without definition or the definition was so unemphasized that you forgot what they meant three minutes later, point in fact I’m still not clear on what exactly a “blackhat” is.  

      I wish I could take this moment and at least talk up the interesting and innovative plot but sadly what film lacks in gunfights and car chases it also lacks in compelling narrative. The entire plot is completely uninspired and the threat wholly mundane leading to simply a long series of tropes, pointless characters, and “I’m too dumb to live” moments. The biggest crime the film commits however is that female lead Chen Lien despite being built up as this brilliant computer analyst was so unimportant to the story that the only thing she actually did was to provide a body for Hemsworth to sleep with and (when his costar Leehom Wang was off screen) talk through all the cyber- babble needed for him to figure out what the bad guy is up to. But this is 2015 movie so there was no way a contemporary movie such as this would miss out on an opportunity to shoehorn in a romantic relationship for Thor god of thunder.   

      Overall the movie was vapidly uninspired and did nothing to garner interest or even the slightest bit of curiosity from its audience. Blackhat's lack of character, story, suspense and general creativity making an evening at home watching the paint on your walls crack a more stimulating experience, at least you can watch that for free.

Say hello to Thor's little friend. but not to loud he's shy and only comes out once in the movie.

*Spoilerific* observations

. Wow, these are some of the worst FBI agents I've ever seen, they assigning academy graduates or something to this case?

. Ok, what the heck were those terrorists waiting for?   Why did they wait for Hataway to get out of the car before blowing it?  And even then why on earth wait so long to blow it at all?  It was like 40 miles later plus one heart to heart and then they decided to blow them all to kingdom come?  Good thing the FBI is so bad at their job otherwise these guys would be toast.

. Wait that’s it? That’s your master plan?  You’re going to flood some tiny third world village to drive up the prices of tin?   Muhahahha No one shall be my equal in tin sales!   Ok, yeah, killing people is always bad but come on even in the shots they showed there really wasn’t much of a village to flood it was pretty much all desert so essentially he was planning to flood the desert so he could become a tin tycoon.   Way raise the stakes buddy.