Blackhat - Film Review

When I first started this blog, one of my first references to entertainment centered around the brilliance of Michael Mann's direction of films like Heat and Collateral. In fact, I've probably referenced Michael Mann's works more than any other director as much of his work is near and dear to my heart. I was first introduced to his works with the television series, Miami Vice (which coincidentally is the first item I reviewed on this blog). Back when this film came out, I was incredibly excited to see it, but the poor reviews came in and it fell off my radar. After a bit of rediscovery, I decided to finally give it a chance and see if Mann still has that style I love so much.

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Where You Can Find It: I checked this one out on Amazon Video, where it is available for rent/purchase.

General Information 
Blackhat is an action thriller film released on 16 January 2015. It was directed and co-produced by Michael Mann under Legendary Pictures with Universal Studios as the distributor. Strangely enough, this appears to be Michael Mann's last feature film as a director. I have not seen any news that he's working on anything since (in a director capacity). I think this is really unfortunate, but it is very possible that his career took a bit of a hit after Blackhat bombed at the box office. Speaking of "bombing," it holds a 51 Metascore on Metacritic and a lowly 32% on the Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes. If that wasn't bad enough, the box office haul was roughly $20 million against a budget of $70 million. It was after reading these figures that I wondered if Mann's hesitancy to helm another feature film is due to lack of desire or the possibility that Hollywood won't trust him with another big budget film. For my part, I hope it's neither, but I think we can all agree that the film industry has become increasingly corporatized lately.

The Story

After two subsequently massive hacking attacks cause a nuclear reactor to explode in Hong Kong and alter soy prices at the Mercantile Trade Exchange, the FBI and People's Liberation Army must team up to catch the terrorists behind it. FBI Special Agent Carol Barrett (played by Viola Davis) and Captain Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang) are both experts in their craft, but something about the hackers' code leads the duo to bring in Chen's sister, Chen Lien (Tang Wei), and Chen's former college roommate, Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth). With Hathaway in prison for previous hacking crimes, Barrett gets his sentence furloughed so he can be point-man on the task force's investigation.

The initial premise of this movie gave me a good deal of optimism as it somewhat mirrors The Kingdom (which was produced by Mann), as it opens with horrible atrocities that cause two nations to come together in order to counter a terrorist threat. Unfortunately, this premise is completely fumbled as nearly all of the characters lack any depth, while the sharing/comparison of cultures is nowhere to be seen. The FBI capitulate to Captain Chen's requests at every turn and are bafflingly lax with handling Hathaway (who is an unrepentant and convicted cyber criminal). Hathaway is essentially given free reign to do what he pleases as we frequently see him investigate on his own or with Chen Lien. The level of the task force's incompetence reaches comedic heights when we see that Hathaway is blatantly sleeping with another member of the task force inside a small apartment the task force is using as a temporary headquarters.

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Hathaway is the ultimate hacker!

Speaking of sex, much of this film centers around a love story involving Hathaway that completely drags down the rest of the film. Hathaway and his love interest have no chemistry together, which only gets worse as the story continues. Despite the fact that the love interest is a member of the task force, she doesn't seem to contribute anything to the overall mission, so her character lacks much foundation. It honestly baffles me that Mann was so invested in this plot, as he's successfully portrayed romantic chemistry in multiple previous works. By the end of the film, my viewing partner and I both continued to believe Hathaway's love interest was simply a spy meant to seduce and later betray him (we were sadly incorrect).

With such weak protagonists, one might hope that Mann would compensate by offering great antagonists like Collateral's Vincent or Heat's Neil McCauley. Unfortunately, that's just not the case here. The hacker syndicate Hathaway is chasing is fairly boring as we never learn much about the mastermind, nor any of their underlings. The Kingdom was able to pull off vague antagonists well because its protagonists were interesting and unique. Sadly, this film is unable to follow suit.

Special Effects/Atmosphere

Mann might be rusty in some areas, but his fighting scenes are still some of the best I've ever seen. Gunshots sound real, and the impact of bullets appear brutally realistic. We don't necessarily see anything on par with Miami Vice's .50 caliber sniper scene, however there's more than a couple of incredibly well-shot sequences here that make the film worthwhile all on their own. I've always appreciated Mann's attention to detail when it comes to firearms, although I must admit one scene nearly ruined it when a character's plot armor engaged that saved them from certain death.

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The fight scenes are about as brutal as this film's critical reception

Another quality of Mann's works is that he's able to brilliantly capture locales (especially urban ones) that help bring the very setting to life. Locations like Hong Kong look simply incredible in this and I was ecstatic to see a film present multiple countries from Southeast Asia in ways in which each area is visually distinctive from the other. The only point where this was not done well is near the end of the film where there's a fight scene in the middle of some type of cultural festival. Despite bullets flying and some of the characters actively harming bystanders, the locals continued to ignore blatant acts of violence committed directly in front of them. 

The Acting

The more I think about this film, the more I believe that this was simply a project designed with Chris Hemsworth in-mind. His character is the only one with any nuance, but it's still relatively barebones as Hemsworth just doesn't gel with this role. After seeing him in Bad Times at the El Royale, I believe he does his best work when he's able to spread his wings and present a wholly unique character. In Blackhat, he's simply another muscle-bound American action hero that has more in common with Arnold Schwarzenegger than any of Mann's previous protagonists.

Viola Davis is completely wasted on this film as her character is barely in it. When Davis is allowed on-screen her character has little to say and even less to actually do. Davis had been nominated twice for the Academy Awards prior to this film's production (she finally won in 2017), but it seems like Barrett's existence is only for the benefit of Hemsworth's Hathaway. The same can be said for John Ortiz (portrays FBI supervisor, Henry Pollack), who is restricted to delivering most of his lines via video calls.

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Davis should've called her agent to get her out of this one instead of helping Hathaway

This is the first time I've seen Tang Wei or Leehom Wang on-screen, so I didn't have much to compare their performances to. I wasn't particularly blown away by either of them, but I lay some of the blame on the writers and Mann as well. Wang probably should've been the main lead of this film as he shows a little promise, but both Wang and Wei are eclipsed by the script's favoring of Hemsworth. 

The Best of the Best: The shootout scenes. The one at the dock was great.

The Worst of the Worst: The romance subplot.

Calhooey Score: 3/10 - Bad

Would I Recommend?

I prefaced this review by stating how much of a fan I am of Michael Mann's work, and I still believe he is one of the most talented directors to work in Hollywood. Despite that, this movie is a forgettable failure that I can't really recommend. I'm incredibly disappointed, but I genuinely hope that Mann can dust himself off and get back out there. Considering this film's failure at the box office, he might be gearing up to hang up his director's cap once and for all. I hope that if this is the case, that he will go out in style with one more ride.

-------------------------------------------------Spoiler Comments-----------------------------------------------------

• I don't care how many push-ups you do in solitary, your body is not going to look like Hathaway's if you're locked in a windowless cell.
• Kassar's gun was able to pierce through an entire shipping container at the Hong Kong docks, but a street sign was apparently too much. 
• I like to think Viola Davis shouted "thank you" when her character got blown away in that street shoot-out. She'd go on to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Fences less than two years later.
• I really hope the NSA isn't as incompetent as this film portrays them to be...
• The fact that the goal of the hackers was to drive up the price of tin might just make this film's antagonists the most boring villains since Quantum of Solace.
• Malaysian phonebooks might just be the most durable substance known to man...
• Speaking of Malaysians, I felt so bad for those cultural festival attendees. They just wanted to march with their torches and a bunch of them ended up getting beaten/shot/stabbed. I'd feel worse if they seemed to care, but they were pretty relaxed about that climactic fight scene.
• I like to imagine an alternate world where Mann cut Wei and Hemsworth from this movie and made Viola Davis and Leehom Wang the main protagonists. Oh what could've been...

----------------------------------------------------References--------------------------------------------------

(1) The Action Elite. (n.d.). Blackhat film cover image. Retrieved from: https://theactionelite.com/blackhat-2015-review/.

(2) Granilsa. (n.d.). Hemsworth hacking gif. Gifer. Retrieved from: https://gifer.com/en/4FNT. 

(3) Seraydarian, T. (2015, August 20). Hathaway fighting gif. XFDR. Retrieved from: www.xfdrmag.net/blackhat-review/blackhat-gif/.

(4) IMDB. (2015). Viola Davis in Blackhat image. Retrieved from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2717822/mediaviewer/rm2905683968/.