A New Chapter
11 years and a couple days have passed since I first ventured into the new year of 2015. A marker in my life as I moved away from family and friends and had to deal with a world unknown. Time passing since and life hasn't been any easier but at this moment, looking back I see that I had a true sense of pure optimism. It would only be a brief moment where being alive seemed to be going alright for the most part since the world didn't look as though it was on the verge of ending. What also made it exciting was the fact that there was a brand spanking new Michael Mann film coming out.
Since the last film of his that I reviewed was Miami Vice, I can say from that moment in the mid 2000's to now that I have been a far more involved fan of the man's work. Reading more about him in the few books that I could get my hands on as well as indulging in his filmography. Even checking out some of his early work like the TV prison film The Jericho Mile. Which I also wrote a review on this site. This fanaticism building to this particular moment in time that any film fan would be excited for.
And so I ventured and saw the film in a small crowd and came out having to ponder but more on that later.
The Teaser Trailer was pretty good
The Film
Now there are currently three different versions of this film available for watch thanks to Arrow Video. There is the US Theatrical, The International version, and a Directors Cut. For this review, I will discuss the US Theatrical to reflect the movie I saw back in 2015 as well as the recently released Directors Cut that was officially released in 2023.
Funny enough, this is not the first time in which I have indulged with both a theatrical and directors cut to a Michael Mann film. There is also the pair of DVDs that I had rented late one night of both the theatrical and directors cut of Michael Mann's Manhunter. Though the difference between the two after watching them as a double feature was so minuscule that it was tough to truly say if there was a difference; nonetheless it was worth the time because Manhunter is such a cool fucking movie. Man I love that one.
The film opens up by showing off the big blue world we know as Earth interconnected as the title of the film appears and then we zoom into the world that ultimately becomes a Chinese nuclear reactor. Looking like a normal day for the Scientists at work and then we slowly dive into the computer itself.
Now, movie hacking has always been the goofiest scene in any movie that went about it in portraying it. From the low lows of the Sandra Bullock film The Net and the forever charming Hackers to the nitty gritty dumbness of Hugh Jackman shaking his ass while hacking himself up a worm that will go about in hacking in Swordfish. It just seems that whenever a movie has to show someone committing the act of hacking that it has always been a challenge for filmmakers to rise up and accomplish filming this in the dumbest way possible. This film though delivers a fresh take on this.
We do not see the endless finger strokes on a keyboard showcasing the precise and amazing skill of a hacker at work. Instead, we are transported to a fantastic visual treat of data flowing through the microscopic infrastructure of computer chips and wires that all starts with a USB stick being inserted into a USB slot. Traveling through these highly intricate systems and watching a high speed piece of data separate itself and travel into the operating system of the previously mentioned nuclear reactor. Then seeing that its a hack that causes the failure of a turbine and soon the stakes are set with an explosion at the nuclear reactor that rocks the world news cycle. Soon after this, another hack occurs with the price of Soy Bean futures increasing due to the hack. The two seemingly unrelated but are they?
The mayhem that both these events cause forces Chinese and American intelligence agencies to work together to figure out what the hell happened. After locating how the hackers got their way in the system, it turns out the hack was using a piece of code written by the Chinese office Chen Dawai (Played by Leehom Wang) with a buddy of his from college. Enter Scene: Chris Hemsworth as Hacker Extraordinaire Nicholas Hathaway.
He's currently doing time and gets a work-pass to help out the FBI and PLA to figure this out and if he helps find the culprit then he gets released from prison. Their investigation has them traveling the world as the team uncovers a global conspiracy involving the want of this hacker mastermind to manipulate the certain destruction of certain areas in 3rd world countries in order to manipulate the stock market once more to make a few more dollars. Rounding out the cast is the always lovely Viola Davis, Holt McCallany, John Ortiz, and Tang Wei.
What follows is what one expects from a Michael Mann film. People going through a process to figure out the why which then involves gunfights, entanglements of forbidden love, and that slick post 2000 Michael Mann digital sheen to it all but let us save the opinion for later and let us travel onward to the directors cut.
The Directors Cut
It's always fascinating to see a new version of a film like Blackhat. Re-watching the Theatrical has me feeling like the story I remember was now rushing itself to get to the good parts as soon as possible and set up the high stakes right off the bat. Which now after watching this new version reveals the biggest difference between them.
The scene that starts off the original version of the film is with the nuclear reactor exploding is now an event that happens later on in the film. The directors cut starts off with solely focusing on the cyber attack of the sudden increase of soy beans futures and the global ramifications of this sudden event. Starting the film at this moment is this strange quiet before the storm. It's a scene that exists but now sets a different tone. Starting off in this eerily empty room with all these screens tracking numbers for various speculation and stocks that you have seen filled to the brim with people selling and buying but now, it just exists. This cold room of brutal capitalism that will never end even as people are not there to be part of it. Sent a real chill down my spine seeing this hacking scene start off the film.
Obviously not the biggest stakes for a film to start off with but it creates a much more grounded world as an event like this means a whole lot more in our capitalistic driven world where stock market manipulation must be controlled so that those in the know will have access to the profits and not those who cause the manipulations for their own ends whether nefarious or not.
We are then introduced to the idea of
a RAT (Rat Access Tool) being used covertly to manipulate the prices
which causes an international partnership to occur between China and
the United States intelligent agencies to go about and solve. The
tension rising and rising as they travel around the world and get into a gunfight and then BOOM! Reactor
explosion. A real big Whoa moment in the middle of all this when this happens because now the stakes have officially been raised Then the
movie, for the most part, follows along with the original version as
far as moving through the same machinations to reach the same ending.
Though the end of this cut seems to fly quicker to the final confrontation between the big evil hacker and Hathaway. No build up and just a simple “You want the money then meet up.” In the Theatrical, there was at least this sense of uneasiness between the two having to meet up since the prearranged site was compromised and now they would have to change location at the last minute. This new location being a place where at the same time was this religious event that I will get into later but that's just gone now and it goes straight to the confrontation. Same ending as the theatrical though with Hathaway and his girl heading off into their future as fugitives on the run.
With this complete change of structure though comes a film that feels far more natural in telling its story. Gradually, as an audience, we learn more and more about the ramifications of this one event that then leads into the real consequences of these events until we ultimately discover, along with the characters in the film as all good detectives movies have you moving at the same pace as the characters in solving the mystery, the end justification for why hacker mastermind does what he does.
This was a real solid version of the film that probably would have worked out better for everyone if this had been released in theaters and not the actual theatrical release. The ramifications of this might have been life altering as 2015 turned out to be a real bad year by November.
What Does It All Add Up To?
Leaving that theater, I didn't feel like I saw a terrible movie but it wasn't as great as I had hoped. Though it was also strange to see the initial mixed reception of the film when it first came out. Obviously this initial release wasn't necessarily going to set the world on fire but even in this strange form, there was a whole lot here to enjoy.
The overall aesthetic that Michael Mann has been working towards with digital filmmaking reaches a strong pivotal moment in this film. The mood that comes across from the visuals along with the music and performances are such that for the most part, it all works. It's all coherent and none of it feels cheap. A lot of digital filmmaking these days looks cheap because it seems that with digital it is easier to cut around corners to not put as much into the surrounding environments. The faux worlds of the digital creation that meanders itself into trying to be something wonderful and extraterrestrial but fails to convey anything but artifice. The difference here is that Mann isn't interested in artificial worlds for his digital vision. He is far more intrigued in whats going on now and wanting to get as close to it as possible with these digital cameras. To create something far more immersive to what we see today which also leaves me wondering about the possibility of the story itself being far too close to real world narratives for audiences to engage with.
In part, this narrative was inspired by the Stuxnet cyber attack on Iran's nuclear program. This odd unknown origin piece of code that caused insane damage and has been verified but not verified to be a country backed attack on another country. All real cloak and dagger shit. Something like that can't be made without needing the audience to be right there from the start. This isn't a movie that wants to hold your hand. It doesn't want to stop and talk out the plot for you to reengage with the material when you happened to have stopped paying attention. This is crafted for you to either get with it or not but as mentioned before, maybe that was the issue.
Stock market manipulation by rogue terrorists whose interests is not contained or drawn from a sense of moral or traditional religious fanaticism isn't one that, at least at the time, American had an interest in. Compared to what came out in wide release that same week, Clint Eastwood's American Sniper, it's not hard to tell how America was more interested in the supposed true story of Chris Kyle running and gunning in the Middle East than anything involving a cyber attack on Soy Bean trading.
Which looking back now to the two films, the all too real Blackhat has shown the true ramifications of stock manipulation as seen the 2016 Administrations failure of protecting Soy Bean farmers as well as various narratives of stolen elections via hacked voting terminals and such. Data security is one topic that has become far more enduring and everyday for everyone now than it ever has been while the popularity of American Sniper has dwindled into one of those 'We really liked this?' kind of movies but I digress.
Blackhat is a film that doesn't have a happy ending. Nobody wins. There is no exit. A small group of cyber terrorists lose but that doesn't mean that it won't happen again or that all crime has stopped. It's just this one particular story. Though even with my enjoyment of the film, I have to admit that there was a problem I had with the film.
Issues
As mentioned before, the end sequence to this film is really great. Shot on site in Jakarta and involves this religious procession where all these people with torches march together all the while the main characters are walking the opposite way. Its a great set up with no real conclusion.
The villain in the film isn't one that has any other motive beyond trying to make a few dollars. A couple more million from the original heist he pulled off in the beginning. And I suppose this is truer to life as we watch billionaires with seemingly dead eye stares and terrible taste parade on television screaming about the beautiful virtues of capitalism but for a movie, I think there needs to be something more. What makes a great villain in a movie compared to a movie counterpart to a real capitalist.
Though this wanting of more could be seen as needing to create a facade and inauthentic character to fulfill this void I have in the film. It's a tough call because the way this movie is tells me it should be this but staying true to the film, it is what it is.
An aside, I remember there was this thread on forum for this film on IMDB that made fun of the fact that Hemsworth had magazines wrapped around him with tape and it goes to show how education is a fundamental flaw in the average American moviegoer. Any American should know that in prison the tradition of having thick multi-paged atlas books and such wrapped around your body is for protection from knives and knife like weaponry. I only say that this should be a fundamental piece of knowledge for all Americans as we have a higher chance of going to prison statistically than graduating college.
A lot of people seem to be confused as to why Chris Hemsworth is playing the role of a hacker but I like the performance. Following in the vein of those characters that we have seen before in previous Mann films such as Thief and Heat where there is a struggle to be striving for a place in the world and unable to completely understand how to get there. Maybe it was the whole Thor thing that fucked him up because honestly, I would have rather seen him go into meatier roles in the vein of this character instead of the hulking facade of a troubled past character we saw in those Extraction movies. God those were terrible.
Final Thoughts
Michael Mann has always been a top 5 director for me. Something about them speaks loudly to whatever lurks within me and I will go see his next film when it comes out. I did actually go see Ferrari and I liked that film as well even though it had a very similar reaction to this film. His next film is going to be a sequel to Heat, based on the novel he wrote which was pretty good as yes, I did read it, and at the age of 82, it might be his last. If this be the case then I can't wait to see it in theaters.