With the recent hacking of Sony by North Korea (or whoever), cyber security is a headline issue. The Sony incident is a reminder that the operating systems for civilization depend on digital technology and are vulnerable to intrusion. Firewalls are like their brick and mortar analogues in that none has ever proved impregnable.
Director Michael Mann explores this anxiety with Blackhat. His new film concerns a mystery hacker, or network of hackers, who get the attention of China and the U.S. by causing a reactor breech at a Chinese nuclear facility and the price of soy to skyrocket at the board of trade. What results is a classic coalition of necessity between opponents—a Chinese cyberwarfare expert, Chin (Wang Leehom), working with an FBI agent, Barrett (Viola Davis). Neither trusts the other, but the feds are convinced by the Chinese to commute the sentence of an imprisoned hacker genius, Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth). After all, he wrote the code for the RAT (Remote Access Tool) allowing the anonymous hackers to enter any system.
As usual, Mann directs an exciting thriller with exotic settings and a race against time with criminals du jour—not to mention the looming promise of highly stylized erotic encounters.
