Blackhat

Michael Mann almost singlehandedly defined the ‘80s.  His brooding take on the cops and robbers genre bounced from the big screen (Thief) to the small screen (Miami Vice) and back again (Manhunter).  His approach elevated these simple stories to Shakespearean heights, riding a wave of neon-soaked noir visuals and trendy synth beats.  It earned him a slew of box-office successes, opening up the playbook to include biographies and epic period pieces.  But, for all his technical skills, Mann works best at street level.  And 2015’s Blackhat finds the director leaning hard into what put him on top in the first place: clever criminals, flawed heroes, and lots and lots of riding around in cars.

Conditionally released from prison to help the feds (and the Chinese government) track down a hacker manipulating the markets and sabotaging nuclear power facilities, Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) is initially in the game for purely selfish reasons.  But the thrill of the chase gets his blood pumping and a romantic entanglement with best friend’s sister (Tang Wei) gives him new incentive to stay out of jail for good.  To do so means matching wits with a computer terrorist whose reach extends dangerously far outside the digital realm.

 

On the surface, Blackhat is everything one could want from a Michael Mann film.  But it’s all surface.  We get lots of lush cityscapes, a menacing synth soundtrack, well-choreographed gunfights and even flashes of the shot-on-video aesthetic from his Tom Cruise-Jamie Foxx collaboration Collateral.  But narratively, the movie is running on fumes.  The reveal of the hacker’s motivations is the only thing holding the plot together, certainly not the limp characters or Hemsworth’s awful New York accent.

 

Mann has, fittingly, always pushed a very masculine point of view in his films; women are either victims or purely there for emotional support.  And Blackhat is no exception.  Viola Davis is wasted as an expendable expository add-on to the team, while poor Tang Wei is saddled with a stand-by-your-hacker role that went out of style in the ‘50s.  There’s no explanation given as to why Hemsworth’s character has Jason Bourne-level skills other than his star status.  For a director who always grounded his films with relatable characters it’s an inexplicable error in judgement.

 

Blackhat isn’t a total loss.  It’s just a “dad” movie, with globe-trotting locations and a slovenly supervillain that harkens back to the age of Bond.  Mann crams in as much techno-babble as possible (and even a 9/11 reference) to keep things relevant, but his film – and his approach to filmmaking – needs an update in the worst possible way.

 

That said, the director’s films are always pretty to look at.  And Arrow Video’s Limited Edition 4k Ultra HD, which includes both the theatrical version and narratively rearranged European version, is a nice upgrade. Extras include brand-new interviews with production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas and cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh, a new audio commentary, behind-the-scenes featurette and extra Blu-ray disc.

 

 

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