Blackhat Review (1 Viewer)

If there's one criticism that deserves to be leveled against the script by first-time screenwriter Morgan Davis Foehl, it's that it suffers from a dire lack of tension, primarily because the movie's villains feel like nothing more than an afterthought.


Heat had Robert De Niro's Neil McCauley; Collateral had Tom Cruise's sociopathic hitman, Vincent; but here, the villains are practically generic — a brutish band of goons (led by The Dark Knight's Ritchie Coster) taking orders from a big bad who doesn't even reveal himself until late in the film's final act. And even then, the results are disappointingly anticlimactic, with the strategy and ultimate motive behind the hack attacks being both overly complex and surprisingly dull at the same time.


The film does deserve points, though, for not resorting to making a stereotypical foreign national the mastermind behind its crimes, as one might expect for a story that takes place largely in Asia. And fans of Mann's previous films will be glad to hear that the director's trademark firefight sequences are as genuinely thrilling, gritty and visceral as they've ever been.


That being said, we're still left to contend with Hemsworth's portrayal of the movie's principle protagonist, whose decidedly Johnny Utah vibe very nearly threatens to derail the credibility of the whole endeavor at every turn. Hemsworth does possess the charm and charisma (not to mention the biceps) to carry the film — no doubt about that — but viewers will need to suspend their disbelief if they're to buy him as the elite hacker the movie makes him out to be, which is essentially how moviegoers should approach the film as well.

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