I have liked a lot of Mann's films but missed this when it came out,it was on limited release and I can see why.
I don't know if it is possible to make a good film about hackers,but this was uninteresting and I had to force myself to watch to the end.
I actually liked this film, mainly for most of the reasons other people did not like it. It's not a "hacker" movie, per se. It's more of a thriller.I liked the casting. Besides John Ortiz, almost everyone else was new to a M. Mann
film. Richie Sister is excellent as Kassar. He was terrific in "American Gangster", although it was a smallish role. He is perfect as the evil antagonist. This is also t be first time I have seen M. Mann use a fair amount of CGI. Someone complained about the audio not synching. They must have been referring to the Chinese. There are 2 dialects primarily spoken in China: Mandarin, the oldest (& most widely spoken!) live language in the world, & Cantonese. Capt. Chen had Mandarin
dubbed in for his Cantonese. I know these things because I took 2 courses in night school at Queens College in NYC just for fun. I am Caucasian, as was the class teacher, which I found to be interesting. He was young, too. Pardon my
digression. I really liked the music score. He used Harry-Gregson Wiliams, but the main theme was by Atticus Ross, a brilliant composer ("The Book of Eli"). I bet he did the backwards looping that plays all through the film. Lastly, I think Mann did not want strong character development. He wanted to show How much can be done on a laptop computer, if you are
smart enough & more importantly, MOTIVATED. I liked it. I've seen Hemsworth show his chops. This was not the film for it. He did exactly what Mann wanted; I promise you all the actors did. Any big fan of his knows that he makes all his actors do a LOT f research, & HELPS them. Most directors don't do this. The greatest director of all, Kubrick, NEVER helped his actors. It was not the way he worked. Mann is like a "players coach" in team sports; the only difference is it's in making films.
I in no way can belive the "Black Widow" software. It"s Hollywood BS. Sure, the NSA has god knows what supercomputer programs, and I believe the part about them having the ability to reconstruct SOME corrupted or "destroyed" files. However, I find it totally UNBELIEVEABLE They could reconstruct files that were radiated as badly as the hard drives in the film. It would be like unfrying an egg! There is no way That is possible. Those drives would look like a piece of crispy fried bacon. No way.
shareI had to force myself to finish it, too. It was so damn tedious.
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