3/10

I have always believed that Michael Mann is overrated as an action genre director. That’s not to say that there aren’t notable exceptions, like “Heat”, “Manhunter”, or “Ali”. Those three films i mentioned are my favorites from Mann, and two of them aren’t considered action genre movies. His latest effort is titled “Blackhat”, a film about the threat of global cybercrime. The film follows a furloughed convict (Chris Hemsworth) and his American and Chinese partners as they hunt a high-level cybercrime network from Chicago to Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Jakarta with a stolen bank account of over 700 million dollars. “Blackhat” had the possibility of being a social commentary for today’s threat in online activity. The film should’ve educated the audience with the mission of educating, not alienating. Where the film suffers the ladder is in it’s hard to understand Cyber world language. Not everyone who watches this film is going to be a highly educated master of internet terminology. The film is hard enough to follow through a first act, but it’s made nearly impossible with the terrible delivery of action camera framing. For a movie full of action in it’s trailer, it sure lacked anything in the two hours and five minute run time that we have to suffer through. I was a little worried going into this film because i knew most of this film would take place at a computer screen. Not exactly the most action oriented of activities. When the action does come, it’s sound editing is done notably enough, but the camera work leaves the long wait totally unsatisfying. We experience more of the shaky camera effect that we have come to know from post “Saving Private Ryan” action films. Two years ago, i wrote about how terrible the camera work was in the action sequences of “A Good Day to Die Hard”. “Blackhat” may have surpassed it with not only terrible framing work that has the actors falling out of many shots, but some excellent sounding action scenes that are missed because the shaking camera is too quick for us to ever register what is going on. Luckily, the film’s final action scene is mostly on the street and in one shot, but it’s over too quick to ever change the damage done by the previous efforts. Like any Mann effort, the film has to have an outrageously cheesy 90’s sex scene, and this one doesn’t disappoint. Chris Hemsworth suddenly has feelings for his best friend’s sister after fifteen minutes of being on screen. The film doesn’t hint at any lost chemistry time between them due to Hemsworth’s jail stint, so this literally comes out of nowhere. If it’s not enough for a fast placing of the film’s on screen duo, they have sex on a rooftop for the entire Tokyo skyline to see. This isn’t a huge deal breaker for me, but it does set a silly tone in the film that tells me it’s writer didn’t believe in the film, so why should i? “Blackhat” is very tedious and boring, but the perfect kind of film for the usual January dumping ground. If the film focused more on educating it’s audience about online terrors and more detail to pacing issues that plagued the film, the movie wouldn’t have been nearly as bad as it’s finished product. Stay away from this one. It’s a mess of epic proportions