Poster of Blackhat

Blackhat

Action, Crime, Thriller

Director: Michael Mann

Release Date: January 16, 2015

Where to Watch

The only reason that I watched Blackhat was because Michael Mann directed Blackhat. Otherwise Blackhat seemed like another cookie-cutter international thriller, which it was. I need to stop watching Michael Mann unless he returns to film. All his later films have a cold, industrial palette of grey and steel blue. I actually hated Blackhat because it has a thin veneer of multiculturalism and international scope to its narrative, but it is just another impossible white man movie where despite all available information on the main character, can do anything. I actually know people who graduated from MIT, and they are awesome, but I don’t think that they would be better than the law enforcement officials in Blackhat at staying alive and defending themselves from international criminals. There is a shoot out that takes place at a festival, and the Indonesians are literally props. If you saw a bunch of white guys brandishing weapons, you wouldn’t just go about your business as if nothing is going on. When the bullets do start to fly, not one Indonesian person is injured even though there are throngs of them running around panicked. A special side eye goes to the writers for using Fukushima as inspiration for a plot device. If Blackhat at least had fun with the impossible white man scenario like Die Hard instead of striving for a veneer of respectability and realism, then at least maybe the viewers could have fun, but no. The worst part: Chris Hemsworth trying to act as if he is a New Yorker with some dreadful American regional accent. Blackhat is somber ridiculousness so skip it.

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