Writer: Morgan Davis Foehl
Director: Michael Mann
Michael Mann turns his attentions to cybercrime for his latest thriller in which convicted hacker Nick Hathaway (Hemsworth) is recruited to help track down a hacker whose attack upon a computer system in China has triggered a power-plant disaster there. This joint American-Chinese operation reunites Hathaway with an old college friend, the two of them having written the first version of the code which has resurfaced in the malware that triggered the events in China. Also in tow is his friend's tech-savvy sister (Tang Wei) who will in no way be drawn into a relationship with Hemsworth during the proceedings, he said with a theatrical wink.
Full marks here for portraying the world of hacking in such a realistic way. Everything here is done practically, there's no outlandish technical gadgetry and, being a bit of a code spod myself, it was nice to see touches such as having to type commands in order to connect external devices to servers before you could get any information from them. In other movies the hero would just plug something in before being greeted with a fabulous CGI rendition of all the files he was copying over, all pf this with no interaction needed other than perhaps a push of an oversized "DOWNLOAD FILES NOW" button on the screen. It may be sad but seeing Chris Hemsworth type a syntactically correct "mount" command at system level made me smile (Yeah! Mount commands! Rock and roll! This is why you read my reviews!). It also provoked a response of "I have no idea what you're talking about" from Mrs. G.
Also, as you'd expect from a Michael Mann film, there's plenty of energetic action, shot handheld so you're dropped right into the middle of the mayhem. The violence is brutal and shockingly effective, the chases tense. More plus points there.
So why am I about to tell you that I thought the film was just okay as opposed to excellent?
Well, as with Miami Vice, the movie becomes bogged down in a romantic subplot that doesn't really convince. Granted, it's better than Colin Farrell's interminable wooing of Li Gong during the middle third of that flick, but it's not that much better. Chris Hemsworth and Tang Wei make an attractive enough couple but there's not a great deal of chemistry between them and I wasn't especially sure as to why they hooked up in the first place. Okay, they get out of a scrape together but their relief at still being alive turns into a full-on snog and fully-clothed hump without much more of an explanation. For the rest of the movie they behave more like office colleagues than lovers, tapping away at laptops, searching for IP addresses and looking at online accounts. Hot stuff, eh? Control yourselves.
There's also the re-appearance of that familiar plot device in which a sympathetic character is blown up at the exact moment you think they're going to be blown up, which is closely followed by the re-appearance of that familiar plot device in which another sympathetic character is shot at the exact moment you think they're going to be shot. There's also a chat between Hathaway and his friend about his dating of the friend's sister where you really should have your "Cliché Bingo" sheet ready. As for the bad guy, in one sense he's refreshingly real but he's horribly bland and not especially threatening either - and he didn't seem all that smart at the movie's climax considering his supposed intelligence.
All of which takes the sheen off what could have been a genuinely smart and exciting movie. Unfortunately, I was tapping my watch when I should have been on the edge of my seat. Having said that, it's beautifully filmed and any film which has Hemsworth attacking a group of bad guys with stuff bought from the Jakarta branch of B&Q has to be worth a look. It's unlikely, however, that you'll be blown away, unlike those victims of the familiar plot devices.
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