Blackhat

Real-life hackers gave cybercrime action thriller Blackhat thumbs-up for accuracy, and the recent Sony security breach makes the film timely; but other flaws cripple the thriller’s ability to, well, thrill.

Too bad, because the plot showed promise: The Chinese government and the FBI enlist the help of incarcerated hacker Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) to track down another hacker, who’s been using his malware to wreak global havoc, such as exploding a nuclear power station in Hong Kong and crashing the stock market. Capture the cyberterrorist, and Hathaway gains his freedom.

The deal rockets Hathaway on a wild, bloody chase through Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and Jakarta with his college buddy Chen Dawai (Wang Leehom), a Chinese agent, and Chen’s beautiful sister Lien (Tang Wei), also a computer genius.

Let’s suspend the disbelief that an MIT-trained tech geek should look like Hemsworth, who played the title Norse god in Thor. Sure, there’s an intriguing twist to casting against type, but Hemsworth fits into his role as he would a tutu. He mumbles out tech terminology, glowers at computer screens, and punches arcane code at the keyboard without the confident ease you’d expect from a computer savant. He’s convincing enough when bashing chairs into faces and poking out brain matter (the movie is rated “R” for violence and bad language), but otherwise feels completely out of place in his role.

The movie’s narrative is just as bulky and blundering. Predictably, Hathaway and Lien fall in love—but the interaction between the two characters is so parched of chemistry that when the two kiss and jump right into fornication, their romance feels abrupt and cheap.

Still, Blackhat has its redeeming moments. Director Michael Mann presents some stylized and stunning scenes. In a couple CGI-generated scenes, we plunge deep into the guts of a computer system as a virus wiggles through the architecture, which is cool enough to cease the eye-rolls and yawns temporarily, but not enough to save Blackhat.