By I am a big Michael Mann fan. Collateral might be one of my favorite films. The guy just knows how to direct. You can be guaranteed at least one breath taking, though provoking shot in one of his films. This is especially true when he’s shooting in a city. The guy just knows how to create an atmosphere that defines whatever city he’s in.
Unfortunately for Blackhat a few good camera angles doesn’t save it from being anything more than an over written, generic thriller where exposition is the name of the game. Mann can only make a bunch of people looking at computer screens stay interesting for so long.
Blackhat
Director: Michael Mann
Rated: R
Release Date: January 16, 2015
Blackhat may be timely in its release with all the issues going on with government hacking, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually all that interesting. Behind the fantastic direction is a plot so thin it makes single ply toilet paper look thick. Someone hacks into a nuclear power plant in China and blows it up. Surprisingly un-phased, the Chinese government sends Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang) over to America to work with Carol Barrett (Viola Davis) of the FBI to track down the hacker. Chen also brings along his sister, Lien Chen (Wei Tang), for no other reason than they needed someone for Chris Hemsworth to fall in love with. Hemsworth, by the way, plays an elite hacker guy who Chen roomed with in college. Chen convinces the FBI to release Nicholas Hathaway (Hemsworth) so the two can track down he bad guys.
The story is relentlessly full of people typing in front of computers saying things that don’t actually mean anything. That’s part of the requirement for a film about hacking and cyber terrorism of course, but Mann has trouble keeping so much exposition clear and with a muddled plot that limps along it’s hard to care. It’s even worse because when the film does get out from behind the computers and starts tearing through the streets of Hong Kong its a gorgeous feast. Mann’s action chops kick back in and things look like they’re going to pick up until the next scene in front of a computer.
Nichalos and Lien’s romance is also painful to get through. The pair spend a day together and suddenly we’re supposed to believe they’ve fallen madly in love. Hemsworth and Tang have almost no chemistry together and the actor often doesn’t seem to want to be there. The pacing for their relationship is about as muddled as the film’s plot, which routinely asks you to make jumps in logic that make little sense all while attempting to string together a twist ending that renders most of the movie pointless.
Once the plot gets to where it thinks it wanted to go the film really has an issue. It’s built up this hacker into a demi-god, but he’s really just a guy. Tacked on to the end of the movie is a sequence so preposterous and pointless it feels like it might be from a different film. Mann’s direction once again saves the conclusion from being unwatchable, but it’s still pretty laughable. You get the feeling that the screenwriters forgot they had to end the movie while they were writing it.
Finally, is the down right odd score. Mann loves his synthesized strings and usually uses them well to pull you into his films, but here the score is often at odds with the film. It’s overbearing at times and pulls you away from what’s going on screen. Other times it works just fine. It’s slightly schizophrenic, which may come from the multiple composer credits the film had.
Blackhat features some of the best city filming Mann has done in a long while and Hong Kong, along with the plethora of other cities, are fantastic locations for him to shoot in. The movie looks great, but it is not a great movie. The plot, story and romance are about as flat as can be. Mann does his best to make what is basically two hours of computer exposition out of the realm of boredom, but there’s only so much stunning directorial work can do. Bad plots are bad plots.
