Blackhat

Espionage. Intrigue. Action. These are all the ingredients of a nail-biting, adrenaline-packed computer spy-hacking film. Sound exciting huh? What a terrific premise to work with assuming one has the best writer working on it. Well, "Blackhat" had the cast and director, but the writing could've had a bit more polished.

Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), an extremely talented hacker who has gone astray, finds his way out of a 15 year prison sentence when parts of a computer code he once wrote with his then friend/colleague, Chen Dawai (Leeholm Wang) during his youth, appears in malware that triggered a terrorist attack at a nuclear factory in China. This opportunity will reunite him with his friend, Chen Dawai along with Dawai's sister, Chen Lien (Wei Tang) who is a software expert, but will also put him in the middle of a power game between the American and Chinese government as well as an arch villain hacker AKA a RAT (Remote Access Tool) whose identity Hathaway has to find if he wants to keep his freedom and also his life as well.

Others to round out the cast are Viola Davis as Carol Barrett, an FBI agent, John Ortiz as Henry Pollack, her boss, Holt McCallany as Mark Jessup, another agent, Archie Kao as Shum, William Mapother as Rich Donahue, Ritchie Coster as Elias Kassar, Andy On as Alex Trang, Yorick Van Wageningen as Sadak and Christian Borle as Jeff Robichaud.

This was directed with such clarity by veteran Michael Mann ("Insurrection" (Documentary) '68, "The Jericho Mile" (TV movie) '79, "Thief" '81, "The Keep" '83, "Manhunter" '86, "L.A. Takedown" (TV movie) '89, "The Last of the Mohicans" '92, "Heat" '95, "The Insider" '99, "Ali" '01, "Collateral" '04, "Miami Vice" '06, "Public Enemies" '09). This man knows how to pace and stage his actors with exact precision and he knows how to keep us on that edge of our seats. This was written by Morgan Davis Foehl, and this is where the problems ensue. First of all, this was clearly a bit long-in-the-tooth--it could have easily been encapsulated in a 2 hour running time or less, and secondly, the script had a tendency to jump around too much as the film went from locale to locale. However, this being this writer's first theatrical film, he performed better than some writers with more experience. I'm sure if given more work, he will improve in time, but this just needed more polish.

Certainly Mann's direction is crisp and precise and Hemsworth gives a worthy performance as this hacker in constant negotiation, but after this 133 minute running time, one might just be yearning for a bit meatier script.

Out of 4 Stars: 2.5                                Rated: R                                    133mins.