Review ‘Blackhat’ From The Editor

“Blackhat” is an action movie that just happens to have a lot of computers in it.

Billed as a cyberthriller, it’s equal parts guns, bladed weapons and people staring intently at computer screens. The film stars Chris “Thor” Hemsworth as Nicholas Hathaway, a hunky hacker who gets sprung out of a 15-year jail sentence with the promise of freedom if he can help track down a mysterious criminal mastermind who is hacking into nuclear power plants and global financial systems.

The idea of Hemsworth trading in his superhero muscles for brainier exploits only lasts for so long. He’s been spending his downtime in jail bulking up, which explains why he looks nothing like the basement-bound, Doritos-munching hacker stereotype we so often see in popular culture. This is a good thing. Coupled with his network-engineer love interest, played by Wei Tang from “Lust, Caution,” we get two hackers who break the mold.

The film’s release is unwittingly timely, considering all the attention surrounding the hack of Sony Pictures late last year and the threats against the comedy film “The Interview.” Instead of North Korea getting the blame here, “Blackhat” focuses on the twisting journey that a team of Chinese and American government specialists take as they hack, run and fly, chasing the trail of the Big Bad, with Hathaway as their guiding light.

The movie opens with an unknown hacker futzing with a nuclear reactor in China and causing a fairly dangerous meltdown (shades of the similar opening to “Godzilla”). In order to figure out who is responsible and stop similar, even-more-deadly attacks, a joint task force made up of Chinese and American officials spring a super handsome hacker named Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) from a maximum security prison to join in the investigation. Yes, this is silly, but Mann and his co-screenwriter Morgan Dvais Foehl make it just plausible enough that you never completely step out of the movie and go, “Wait… what?”

In the interest of full disclosure, Viola Davis co-stars as a member of the task force, and Yorick van Wageningen, the creepy guy who raped Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth Salander in “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” is, somewhat predictably, the bad guy. Mann is known for his characterization through physicality, and there’s a moment of shocking earnestness when a character asks Davis who she lost in September 11th. It’s an alarming moment of introspection and one of the movie’s most touching scenes.

Part of what makes “Blackhat” such an effective cyber thriller (the best, probably, since Phil Alden Robinson’s criminally underrated “Sneakers”) is that he always favors something immediate and tactile, stuff like shootouts and fist fights and stakeouts. Hemsworth is an unconvincing nerd, but he makes a passing comment about how he had to keep both his mind and his body sharp in prison, and, again, it makes just enough sense in this skewered world.

And Mann occasionally goes out of his way to remind us that he’s still a dweeb at heart; while suiting up to face down the big villain at the end, he makes impromptu armor out of old magazines. (In another scene he fretfully works on a computer, his shirt hanging open to reveal his chiseled chest.)

Mann has his hands full with building excitement during the hacking scenes. One solution he hits on is to dive deep into computers, pulling the viewer inside the hardware at a microscopic level. Visually, it’s a heck of a lot of fun. Otherwise, we get the required close-ups of random-looking strings of numbers and letters on computer screens. And then Mann just seems to say, “Screw it. Now we’re gonna blow stuff up and smash bottles into people’s faces.”

There are moments of startling violence in “Blackhat.” I saw the film at a late-evening showing with only three other people in the audience, but there was at least one audible gasp from the woman sitting behind me. Mann isn’t afraid to take away characters you like in horrible ways. There’s a bit of an inner-George R.R. Martin to him.

“Blackhat” feels experimental, both through the mishmash of visuals and the pacing, which sometimes lingers too long on close-ups of faces or colorful backgrounds on location. The main baddie remains an enigma, with less character development than a Bond villain. If you like Mann’s previous work, particularly the “Miami Vice” movie, you may well be intrigued by “Blackhat,” but it isn’t likely to be hailed as anything close to Mann’s finest moment.