Black Hat
Director: Michael Mann
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, Wei Tang
133 mins; Class 15;
KRS Releasing Ltd

A Michael Mann film comes with high expectations, for he always challenges his audiences with fascinating storylines, appealing (if flawed) characters, and exceptional production values, often creating glossy environments that enhance his story.

If Blackhat lacks some of the edge displayed in his seminal Heat (1995) or the character depth of Insider (1999) and Public Enemies (2009), there is no doubt that it still provides a couple of hours of solid entertainment.

In a story that could be ripped straight from the headline news, a nuclear power plant in Hong Kong is hacked causing a near meltdown. Sometime later, the Mercantile Trade exchange in Chicago is also hacked, sending soy futures skyward and causing market chaos.

Chen Dawai (Wang Leehom), a Chinese People’s Liberation Army captain is charged by his superiors to liaise with the FBI to find the perpetrators of the hack.

Dawai persuades FBI special agent Barrett (Viola Davis) that the only person capable of tracing the cyber-terrorist is Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth).

Nicholas is Dawai’s former MIT classmate, who is now serving time in prison for cyber-crimes of his own.

Acknowledging that this is the optimal solution, Barrett arranges for Hathaway’s release. Together with Dawai’s sister - systems network engineer Chen Lien (Tang Wei) and a US Marshal charged with keeping an eye on Hathaway, the team travel across the globe from Chicago to Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Malaysia and to Jakarta, as the danger to international security is heightened.

Technophobes will have a hard time keeping up with the intricate plot

Blackhat takes a detailed look at a rather sobering subject, with the men and women protagonists fighting a threat they cannot identify.

Mann can always be counted on to create taut, tension-filled moments and this is no exception, with the perpetrators’ identity and true motives unclear to the team hunting them for a good portion of the story.

That this is so topical an issue is also to be applauded coming so soon after the Sony hack debacle. It is however, inspired by a more sinister event – the hacking of a uranium enrichment plant in Iran a few years ago, an incident that piqued Mann enough for him to want to delve further into this illicit and dangerous world. He and screenwriter Morgan Davis Foehl has come up with a film that is authentic and obviously thoroughly researched.

It must be said, however, that technophobes will have a hard time keeping up with the intricate plot that ties the two hacks on opposite sides of the world to a much larger agenda. The complicated plot is not helped by the jargon-heavy dialogue, as the cast pore over the intricacies and technical minutiae of the hackers’ every move.

Mann makes up for this with numerous breath-taking action scenes shot with energy and dexterity, each one propelling the story line a little further forward in its own way as the hunters get closer to their prey and the prey begins to fight back.

Mann is served uniformly well by his cast, even if characters are a little thinly sketched, with the good guys and the bad guys clearly delineated with Hemsworth’s Hathaway to cleanly in-between.

Hemsworth has a more cerebral role than we are used to seeing him in and his effortless charisma serves him well as the titular ‘blackhat’ hacker. Wang Leehom as Dawai is an interesting new face we will hopefully see more of; while Viola Davis continues to build on her solid reputation as an actress of effortless diversity as the no-nonsense requisite love interest for Hathaway.

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