"Reboot" is a 40-minute science fiction short film from 4 years ago written and directed by Joe Kawasaki, his very first work in both professions. I wish I could say something more positive, but I did not enjoy the watch too much. It's very generic and uninteresting and brings really nothing new to the genre. Hopefully he can step things up a bit in the future. The acting was solid, but not enough to elevate the mediocre script. The only thing that really shines in here were the protagonist's hair and looks I have to say. I believe "Reboot" is only worth the watch for huge science fiction suckers, but everybody else can totally skip it. Also had some lengths. Not recommended.
5 Reviews
Please don't waste 39 minutes of your life watching this...
cinet-127 December 2012
Warning: Spoilers
What a great premise: "A young female hacker awakens from a traumatic event that she scarcely remembers, and an iPhone glued to her hand. On the phone, a countdown is ticking away to zero." Unfortunately, that is the ONLY good thing about the film. There is even a clue as to the disaster that is about to be watched in the mention of an iPhone! In the first few minutes of the film, the iPhone gets hooked up to a MacBook and the MacBook is running the simplest JavaScript code imaginable from a "C:\Windows" prompt. Really? A hacker running a Windows emulator on a Mac? Epic tech fails on the level of 24! (see the episode where the 'Internet gets hacked'!) There's also the part where the 'payload' is one single line of plain-English code which Stat (played by Emily Somers) is able to circumvent it by modifying already-running code.
At this point, you may be saying, "Dude you are just a geek!" This may be true. This IS true! Unfortunately, there are also major plot letdowns. We're talking about a 39-minute short here. Get in, get out and hit it hard - just like an old-school Isaac Asimov sci-fi short story. There was no need for the side story with the girl bound to a chair watching her life being uploaded.
In the end, we find out the punchline is 'the system is bad so it has to be taken down' and all of the lights in the city go out and the closing credits roll. Could you be more generic?
At this point, you may be saying, "Dude you are just a geek!" This may be true. This IS true! Unfortunately, there are also major plot letdowns. We're talking about a 39-minute short here. Get in, get out and hit it hard - just like an old-school Isaac Asimov sci-fi short story. There was no need for the side story with the girl bound to a chair watching her life being uploaded.
In the end, we find out the punchline is 'the system is bad so it has to be taken down' and all of the lights in the city go out and the closing credits roll. Could you be more generic?
How to create a hacker movie
rerooted10 November 2013
After all the miserable failures to create a decent hax0r movie, this one is actually the first one that I have seen (and some things from Die Hard 4 also comes to mind) that has some sense and code in it that is not embarrassing. Kudos to Offensive Security guys that helped the movie gets some real hacking background, so that people who are writing the code don't look like morons typing holoprojected 3D cubes in hyperspace and instead coding in C, using Metasploit and win command line the proper way.
Movie itself has a decent premise, sort of a hacker holy grail. I understand that most of the people not coming from infosec community don't see some real meat here, but let me just say that some of the mentions in the credits of the movie outro are respected in infosec community. It might not be a fully fledged, 2h thriller keeping you on back of your seat, but it is THE BEST movie I have seen on the hacker culture that can fit into the 40 min format.
Movie itself has a decent premise, sort of a hacker holy grail. I understand that most of the people not coming from infosec community don't see some real meat here, but let me just say that some of the mentions in the credits of the movie outro are respected in infosec community. It might not be a fully fledged, 2h thriller keeping you on back of your seat, but it is THE BEST movie I have seen on the hacker culture that can fit into the 40 min format.
40 minutes of my life I wont get back
mattjay-6880617 April 2023
I like hacker type movies. I love tech. Some of my favourite shows/movies involve hacking and similar things.
I give movies a wide berth. This movie however is complete garbage. I dont know if its the story, acting, direction. They all seemed terrible. It had potential to be good but just as the movie finished, it got started. The acting was wooden and basic. Somers (the protagonist) is dull and uninteresting. The other characters were forgetful.
Some of the technical stuff they do in it is accurate from a hacking perspective but that's the only positive thing about this.
Do not waste your time with this, even if it is only 40 minutes.
I give movies a wide berth. This movie however is complete garbage. I dont know if its the story, acting, direction. They all seemed terrible. It had potential to be good but just as the movie finished, it got started. The acting was wooden and basic. Somers (the protagonist) is dull and uninteresting. The other characters were forgetful.
Some of the technical stuff they do in it is accurate from a hacking perspective but that's the only positive thing about this.
Do not waste your time with this, even if it is only 40 minutes.
An interesting short film with very good acting
fortionat18 January 2013
I watched this with an open mind not worrying about the low rating so far on IMDb and I was pleasantly surprised. The acting and quality camera work were very well done and were not diminish by a story that had a good premise but was missing some elements of information. And unfortunately the final song to start the end of the movie was horrible. But the beauty of a well done short movie is it leaves a lot more to the imagination of the audience. The short is one of the hardest movies to make now and this movie was fast paced with intelligent thought and decent dialog.
I see about 70 to 80 new movies (new to me) every year but only write a few reviews as I believe a decent review should be well written and the reviewer should have a good sense of films, which takes some time I do not have. But I saw that the review on here was so poorly written without much thought or understanding of this film I felt it necessary to try an give a more realistic and open minded review. First, this film has nothing to do with nor any of its references directly taken from "Fight Club" as one reviewer suggested. If talking about how the cost of materialism has effected the world makes it a "Fight Club" reference then that's like saying any movie that talks about the south is is "Gone With The Wind" reference. In Fight Club one major theme was around materialism and how it controlled our life's, a theme at its pinnacle in 1999-2000 when Fight Club came out. This is 13 years later where we see the cost of having everything available everywhere, like Coffee which is very labor intensive as Jesse spoke of in the movie, is causing a huge divide between the classes of rich and poor and an incredible strain on the world's resources. That is a very real theme today that many people are aware of that goes beyond just the self indulgent life style of the past 20 years.
The movie tries to make radical 'change' Jesse's theme at a level that implies that hackers and coders do have much control over what goes on not just in the cyber world but in everyday affairs. The group Anonymous comes to mind, and not that I agree with their methods, but they are real and are having some effect, whether one sees it as good or bad.
Emily Somers (Stat) and Travis Aaron Wade (Jesse) both did an excellent job acting. One can notice for a short film how the expressions and feelings have to develop much quicker and they do in Reboot. I recommend you see this with an open mind and not be disappointed with an ending that leaves you thinking about whats next.
I see about 70 to 80 new movies (new to me) every year but only write a few reviews as I believe a decent review should be well written and the reviewer should have a good sense of films, which takes some time I do not have. But I saw that the review on here was so poorly written without much thought or understanding of this film I felt it necessary to try an give a more realistic and open minded review. First, this film has nothing to do with nor any of its references directly taken from "Fight Club" as one reviewer suggested. If talking about how the cost of materialism has effected the world makes it a "Fight Club" reference then that's like saying any movie that talks about the south is is "Gone With The Wind" reference. In Fight Club one major theme was around materialism and how it controlled our life's, a theme at its pinnacle in 1999-2000 when Fight Club came out. This is 13 years later where we see the cost of having everything available everywhere, like Coffee which is very labor intensive as Jesse spoke of in the movie, is causing a huge divide between the classes of rich and poor and an incredible strain on the world's resources. That is a very real theme today that many people are aware of that goes beyond just the self indulgent life style of the past 20 years.
The movie tries to make radical 'change' Jesse's theme at a level that implies that hackers and coders do have much control over what goes on not just in the cyber world but in everyday affairs. The group Anonymous comes to mind, and not that I agree with their methods, but they are real and are having some effect, whether one sees it as good or bad.
Emily Somers (Stat) and Travis Aaron Wade (Jesse) both did an excellent job acting. One can notice for a short film how the expressions and feelings have to develop much quicker and they do in Reboot. I recommend you see this with an open mind and not be disappointed with an ending that leaves you thinking about whats next.
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